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Pleistocene Big Cats
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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 (02-12-2018, 12:31 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Panthera tigris oxygnatha: Giant, because the Sunda Shelf was exposed, and many mainland species migrated into the Sunda Shelf. A - AGE, PLACE, DETERMINATION, SIZE AND MONEY TOO Sumatra is possible, but one would have expected a more eastern location. The angles in the skull suggest that northern Asia can't be ruled out. The most striking features are the robustness and, in particular, the length and width of the lower canine. It's so much out of order, it doesn't seem to fit. When questions can't be answered, money never is far away. If the fragment really is as old as he says and if it really is from the Sunda Shelf, it would be close to priceless. Not $2500. Things don't add up in this respect. Assuming it is the real deal, the length and width of the lower canine strongly suggests a tiger. A large and very robust tiger, that is. Based on what is known, the Sunda Shelf qualifies, but tigers in northern Asia also have been large and robust at times. The fragment could be very old, but skulls and bones of tigers found in layers deposited in the Early Pleistocene also qualify in the size department. B - A FEW PHOTOGRAPHS FOR COMPARISON I could be mistaken, but I think Grizzly posted most of the photographs over the years (01, 02, 03, 06 and 08). The others were posted by yours truly. 01 - If correct, this skeleton is from a tiger farm. If so, chances are it was a large male Amur tiger:  *This image is copyright of its original author 02 - Skeleton of what most probably is an adult male tiger from the Late Pleistocene (China). In that period, lions and tigers both lost quite a bit of size. More robust that the skeleton above, so it seems:  *This image is copyright of its original author 03 - Upper skull of a Pleistocene tiger from China. Watch the teeth in the second picture:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author 04 - Skull of a wild old male Amur tiger from northern China (P. tigris altaica):  *This image is copyright of its original author 05 - Skull of an old captive Amur tigress (P. tigris altaica):  *This image is copyright of its original author 06 - Skull of a very large captive male tiger next to the skull of an average-sized captive male (subspecies and age unknown):  *This image is copyright of its original author 07 - Skull of a captive young male Java tiger (P. tigris sondaica):  *This image is copyright of its original author 08 - Skull of an old captive male Indian tiger (P. tigris tigris):  *This image is copyright of its original author 09 - Skull of a captive male Sumatran tiger (P. tigris sumatrae):  *This image is copyright of its original author 10 - Skull of a wild male Indian tiger (P. tigris tigris). My guess is that the last part of the upper skull was sawn off (not unusual in those days). Later, it was repaired. It's very likely that the owner of the skull was a large animal:  *This image is copyright of its original author C - TO CONCLUDE Interesting site and remarkable find, Grizzly. There's no question that the owner of the mandible competed for first place in the size department. It could be a fragment of a very old skull from Sumatra, but it could also be a fragment of a tiger skull from the Early Pleistocene from central or northern China. At the moment, there're too many unanswered questions. Maybe this is the reason that things do not quite add up in the money department. The photographs were added to get to a debate. Any ideas? 
@peter
@tigerluver has just PMed me this morning, he has already contacted to the seller. And the seller has provided him a few more snapshots from different angles. Right now, he was told to not post these pics on public for the moment. BTW, the mandible seems to be well over 30 cm, and very reminiscent to that of the Sunda tiger. If the fossil is authentic, do you think it is still overpriced? And tigerluver wants to acquire the fossil for study if everything is legit, but I do believe that he should spend it more wisely. BTW, you can check my private message for you.
@tigerluver
Have you just bought that mandible? I see the mandible has been removed from the shopping cart in his website. Now there is a much smaller 7.5 inches mandible that has been labelled as "Panthera tigris soloensis", and could this one belong to a small female?   *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author The mandible has some archaic features that make a clean comparison impossible. I'll try to touch on those soon.
Have you validated the identity of the fossil?
Is it really belonged to a Ngandong tiger from the late Middle Pleistocene? 
Based from Peter post #811, i made this comparison based from the scale below of each skulls.
if im not mistaken all scales is in cm. correct me if im wrong.  *This image is copyright of its original author i know this comparison couldn't 100% accurate, for example the wild male bengal skull is in slightly different angle than others, but overall it gives us the idea of how large the owner of that mandible should be.
@GrizzlyClaws , so the Sangiran label came from the fact that this fossil came from Sumatra and not Java. A few papers have incorrectly assigned Sangiran to Sumatra, thus it was thought to be from Sangiran. But it cannot be as it was excavated in Sumatra. It's something new. Compared to the Javan mandibles, some ratios are markedly unique. The body is proportionally short and long once the entire mandible gets reconstructed, like that of modern mainland tigers. All dentition are proportionally small, but oddly the P3/P4 ratio is much larger than on any of the Javan or mainland forms. The dentition are more anteriorly positioned as well. The anterior angle of the body is more similar to that of modern mainland tigers than the Ngandong specimen but this seems flexible as the same angle is seen in the Trinil mandible. Given all this and the fact that the bone's trabeculae are clearly visible (meaning the fossil is authentic), it is an exciting find. Let me know what pictures and measurements could be of interest.
 *This image is copyright of its original author To add, the fossil as is weighs about 422 g. An entire tiger mandible was found to weigh 350 g on average. This indicates a hefty degree of fossilization.
Yes, Sangiran is located in Java, not in Sumatra. And this specimen is heavily fossilized even compared to the Ngandong specimen, maybe it is truly Panthera tigris oxygnatha according to the seller? But it also bears the same morphological resemblance with Panthera tigris trinilensis, maybe it could also be a giant specimen of Panthera tigris trinilensis?
As for the mandible weight, do you mean that the fragment of the left side of the mandible weighing about 422 grams, and the entire mandible of the modern Sunda tiger only weighs about 350 grams?
Unfortunately the P. t. oxygnatha relationship is hard to tell as the book by Hemmer is hard to find. P.t. trinilensis could be the species. The oddest part about the mandible is that the teeth are anteriorly shifted. Maybe if we call back to what we established during a discussion of oddly massive skulls, the fact that large skulls have weird ratios intrinsically could explain this characteristic.
For the mandible weight, essentially yes. This study about the tiger mandible reports the average mandible length and weight of their sample, which was 201 mm and 350 g, respectively.
According to Wikipedia, Panthera tigris trinilensis has existed from 1.2 mya to 50 kya, this means they have survived over 1 million years.
That was a very long period, and I don't think the size of this subspecies could remain constant in a such long interval. I think the previous smaller specimens and this giant specimen were likely not belonging to the same period. BTW, I think the lower canine alone of this giant specimen could weigh at least 150 grams, and its upper canine could weigh over 200 grams, that's quite consistent with the giant canine teeth of other tigers. When the canine teeth are super heavy, then it is expected to belong to a super heavy skull.
I did one more comparison with Brongersma's Trinil mandible:
 *This image is copyright of its original author I added some opacity to the prior overlay comparisons:  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author It's generally agreed upon that the Trinil tiger did not span that close to modern times and that is transitioned into the Ngandong tiger.
I agree, since 50 kya sounds like the extinction timeline of the Ngandong tiger, likely they did struggle several thousands years after the Toba eruption.
BTW, do you think the transitional phase between Trinil tiger and Ngandong tiger was super sized or shrunk sized?
It's hard to say. It seems generally we find small tiger fossils per faunal level then one giant ones comes out of no where. So we need to keep digging literally to get an accurate picture.
Looking at the comparisons, do you see more similarity of the new mandible to the two Trinil mandibles or the three modern mandibles?
They are morphologically closer to the Trinil ones than the modern ones, since all contemporary specimens should bear more morphological resemblance to each others than their modern counterparts.
Except this giant mandible is proportionally more robust than the other two Trinil mandibles.
I was able to find some P. t. oxygnatha photos from Brongersma, and I think Mr. Stout has the ID right. Here's an overlay comparison:
 *This image is copyright of its original author The shrunken distance between the canine and the P3 is shared with P. t. oxygnatha. Another way to look at it is that the P3 sits above the mental foramen, a trait not found in more recent species. We find the same anterior shifted dentition in the Longdan tiger:  *This image is copyright of its original author The only dental trait that distinguishes the new mandible from the aforementioned specimens is that P4 is proportionately small. |
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