The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[Balam]

@Ashutosh  there is actually no major morphological differences between Sri Lankan and mainland Indian leopards, definitely not in terms of size as both populations appear to peak their weight at around 80 kg. Sri Lankan leopards avoiding island dwarfism can be attributed to their role as the top cat which leopards in the mainland don't have, but besides that most of their changes appear to be related to behaviour rather than morphology, such as the lack to hoist prey in the absence of larger predators.

With cave lions their closeness to modern lions is even more marked than with the clouded leopards, in fact we have frozen cave lion cubs that clearly depict almost no morphological differences with modern lions. There is no reason to believe that they are completely different altogether with the *relative* short diversion time between both species. We are dealing with two closely related animals, which is why the researchers felt comfortable in grouping cave lions in the subspecies category of Panthera leo at the beginning of the study. Regardless of their classification as different subspecies with a close diversification from Panthera leo, or a subspecies of the latter, we are dealing with a true lion lineage. Reply