ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[tigerluver]

The issue with the Wahnsien form being the direct ancestor to our modern species is the mandible which is we concluded to be very recent. 200 kya isn't enough time for such drastic changes, especially considering when the skull morphology of the Ngandong form is closer to the modern forms. Just considering the Manchurian mandible and the Ngandong mandible, they're different.

Another aspect to note is that the Wahnsien form has robust metapodials not seen in modern tigers and all Sunda forms. If we conclude that the Manchurian mandible is of the same species that Hooijer identified as P.t. acutidens (and our date estimate is correct), 200 kya again isn't enough time for such drastic metapodial thinning.

Remember Xue et al. (2015) found genetic evidence to support my theory that there was a large pandemic Ngandong tiger population in Sunda and maybe even southern China. I'm more inclined to say that the rising sea levels separated the population, leaving the island forms and mainland forms to evolve. The Wahnsien cat likely went extinct by the Holocene by this logic. Reply