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

[tigerluver]

Dishonest Dentition?
In another thread, I touched on the weak predictive power of dentition measurements when one is trying to determine the full specimen's size and mass. @GuateGojira kindly posted some data a long while back from several sources on tiger dentition somewhere in the annals of the internet. Being reminded of the topic, here is some data on the correlation dentition and skull size in P. t. altaica, P. t. tigris, and P. t. sondaica.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

It is interesting that the correlation is a bit different for each species. I would ignore the P. t. altaica M1 vs. GSL regression because the sample size is much too small. 

R-squared values are very weak for all subspecies for all teeth. In P. t. sondaica there is a significant correlation (p<0.05) between PM4 and skull length, however prediction is still weak. For all other measurements (bar the Amur M1 set), there is no significant correlation (p > 0.05). Reply