ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)

[GuateGojira]

Wow, well done @johnny rex!!! Ok, let's take a look to these pictures. Did you take it, or it was another person?

To be honest is very hard to see the exactly size in the meter to the 1/16 of an inch, specially because of the curvatures and that some parts are not completelly flat, but IF I see correctly, the greatest length from incisors to the posterior end of the inion is about 16 1/4 in (413 mm) which means that excluding the incisors and taking the length from the anterior end of the premaxillary it will be about 407 mm; the byzigomatics arches are about 11 1/2 in (292 mm). This is in fact the widest skull from a lion that I know.

To make a comparison, the largest and widest wild-origin skulls from scientific records are 401 X 247 mm and 393 x 256 mm respectively, both from Southern Africa (Roberts, 1951). From captive specimens, the longest and widest skull that I know is a specimen of 410 X 300 mm from Egypt, probably a captive "Barbary" lion (Saber & Gummow, 2014). From Rowland Ward edition of 1975 the longest and widest skulls are 420.7 X 273 mm and 384.2 X 288.9 mm (it doesn't say if are "owner's measurements" or measured by Rowland Ward's company staff). Finally the extra large lion from Boneclones.com is of 393 X 278 mm.

With all these skulls for comparison, it seems that this "Lionzilla" skull match almoust perfectly with the giant lion skull from the Egypt museum. I will corroborate with the authors if the large skull is the same specimen from the National Circus in Egypt.

I have a very large database of wild and captive skulls, and the only "real" specimen that match the measurements of the "Lionzilla" skull is the the Egyptian specimen. Is posible that these two skulls are, in fact, one and the same? Reply