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

[GuateGojira]

The information of GrizzlyClaws in very interesting, and help to build our panorama of tiger expansion. Could you show references of that swamp habitat in that time?

The intermix of Sunda and Mainland tiger could explain why the robustness of the metapodials was smaller, but I have found another problem: time.

As far I know, ther is not any exact or modern methods of the fossils from Wanhsien, and those metapodials could be older than we think, even older than those of Ngandong. If this is true, a cline on size could explain the reduction, followed of course by the great genetic bottleneck after the Toba event, which sustain my previous statement. Also, even if the Sunda forms already have the narrow metapodials, that don't prevent the mainland forms of repeat the same change, just like some mainland tigers do have the narrow occiput of the island forms even in modern times.

Your point on the pandemic species is very true, but these differences will be clinal, like Kitchener pointed out and based on they proper ways of life, habitat and prey. So like I said, if in just 70,000 years those allopatric differences were very marked between Amur and Javanese tigers, imagine what would happen in 200,000 years!

I think that the Ngandong tiger lived in the entire Sunda shelf like the dominant predator, an area larger than modern India, and probably mixed with the northern Wanhsien tigers without any problem. However, something punch my head, the case of Panthera atrox and Panthera spelaea, which lived also very close in Noth America but never mixed, based in genetic differences. I know that this was probably not the case with the tigers, as they were always very close and never isolated, but I think that we could take in count such an scenario at some point.

Still, the idea that the Wanhsien tiger in the south area could be altered by the constant contact with the northern Ngandong population is very probable and at the end, the mixed population could be the only survivors of the Toba event, a group of tigers with large size but with less robust limbs, a mix of both worlds. I think this could be plausible.

By the way, thanks for the document Tigerluver, I have lost it in my database. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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