Skulls, Skeletons, Canines & Claws

[Spalea]

@GrizzlyClaws :

You told :

" The Panthera spelaea group did precede the domination of the late Pleistocene tigers, but their extinction was a natural occurrence.

The late Pleistocene/early Holocene tigers on the other hand got disrupted by the rise of the human influence, and this forced them to abdicate their giant pantherine status.
Without the rise of the Homo sapiens, maybe both Panthera tigris and Panthera leo would still remain giant in their respective domain. "

If I can sum up what you say: extinct lions disappeared at first through a natural occurence ? Yes as concerns the Cromerian lion, the African pleistocene lions in Africa and probably too the pantera atrox, the american lion. But as concerns the Cave lion in Eurasia, its reign was also disrupted by the human influence as the tiger's late Pleistocene was.

In my opinion, felids were the most evolved terrestrial and mammalien 100 % predators. And among them, the biggest ones, lions and tigers were the most victorious too. Without the human rise, they would have been stayed the most performing ones. Natural animal supremacies depend on long-term natural cycles. The human apparition and supremacy were, by contrast, very short. As soon as the human specy ceased to be a nomad population (Neolitic) in order to become a sedentary one by starting to accumulate some food stocks, the market economy was born. The wild life decline was irrecoverably engaged.

But it's an other story. Reply