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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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 (09-10-2018, 08:33 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: To be honest, Ngandong tiger may not as huge as we image, the largest felines in history were prehistoric lions and giant machairodontinaes . The Ngandong tiger (Panthera tigris soloensis) is know for just a few bones and still this bones are larger than many of the bones of the cave "lions" spelaea/fossilis/atrox. On the other side, the cave "lions" are known for many more fossils, and we have a good idea about its sizes. My point is that in fossil records you need many fossils to get a good idea of the avearage and maximum sizes and to found a "big" specimen is very rare, is something that we can achieve only if you found many fossils. In the case of the cave "lions" spelaea/fossilis/atrox we know this, but in the case of the tiger is different. We have few bones of the Ngandong tiger and the probability says that those bones are from "average" specimens, not from the largest. This means that the huge tiger with the femur of 480 mm, which is larger than in any recorded felid, was probably an "average" specimen and this suggest that larger tiger may exist, but we need to search it. A similar case is that of the Spinosaurus, which we have very few fossils but until resently Paleontologist found the larger specimens. So, in theory, the largest Pleistocene tigers were probably of the same size than the largest Pleistocene "lions", but we need more fossils. I don't think that Machairodontids were as big, in fact they fossils are more slender and even the skull is much narrow than modern Pantherines. Those weights estimated of over 400 kg for M. kabir and M. horribilis and made with the formulas of Anyonge (1993) which produce gross overestimations and Van Valkenburg (1990) which also produce overestimations as her formula based in Condylobasal length depends more of the length of the skull and ignore its robusticity. (09-10-2018, 08:41 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: Panthera atrox in South America has left the fur record, and new studies showed that they may left the hunting record In fact, there is a study that found skin patches but the genetic studies shows that these are jaguars. Chimento & Agnolin (2017) did not made any study in the skin patches found in the Cueva of the Milodón; they clasified it as Panthera atrox just because the original papers clasified it as P. onca mesembrina. Now the study of Metcalf et al. (2016) were Dr Ross Barnett participated shows that those samples were in fact from jaguars and in figures two the Mithocondrial DNA phylogeny shows the genetic affinity of the pleistocene jaguars of America. I am inclined to believe that those large cats from South America are in fact giant jaguars. Also remember that another study from Dr Barnett also showed that the cave "lions" are not lions at all, but a difference species by its own. So genetic studies are very important to understand the evolution of the animals, they phylogenetic relations and the taxonomic results. (09-10-2018, 05:43 PM)peter Wrote: This skull is from a 4-year old male Amur tiger. The tiger was shot by the director of the Koln zoo (Germany) after he had killed a keeper. The article was discussed in the tiger thread not so long ago. Watch the scale of 125 mm. just below the skull and tell me what you think: Wow, this is a BIG tiger skull. I guess that is from a captive specimen. Can you tell me the link for the study, or the post with this information? (09-10-2018, 06:59 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: In fact, that giant mandible was dated around 50 kya, but it is closer to the modern tiger morphologically. That is correct, if we follow the genetic evidence in Luo et al. (2004), all the tigers after the Toba eruption are genetically decendents of the surviving population in the north of Indochina, so they belong to the present P. tigris crono-subspecies and that it splited in two subspecies at 12,000 year ago: mainland-P. t. tigris and Sunda-P. t. sondaica.  (09-10-2018, 09:44 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(09-10-2018, 05:43 PM)peter Wrote: This skull is from a 4-year old male Amur tiger. The tiger was shot by the director of the Koln zoo (Germany) after he had killed a keeper. The article was discussed in the tiger thread not so long ago. Watch the scale of 125 mm. just below the skull and tell me what you think: Read it more about it here https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-on-the-...s?page=104  (09-10-2018, 09:48 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(09-10-2018, 06:59 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: In fact, that giant mandible was dated around 50 kya, but it is closer to the modern tiger morphologically. Could you make a size comparison between this big mandible and that of Panthera atrox? Just to intuitively visualize how big it really is.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
 (09-10-2018, 09:42 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(09-10-2018, 08:41 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: Panthera atrox in South America has left the fur record, and new studies showed that they may left the hunting record  *This image is copyright of its original author The Panthera atrox's fur record, it looks like a real lion but not jaguar. BTW, according to the new studies, Panthera atroxs in South America also has been discovered that they may living in the cave. (09-06-2018, 05:14 AM)GuateGojira Wrote:Well Guate, I had read about your conclusion that the American Lion's maximum weight is 351kg according to the Christiansen&Harris's speculation in 2009, but the 351kg was based on the 458MM skull specimen, not the biggest one, as a matter of fact, if you base on the 468MM skull specimen, the American Lion's maximum weight can up to 400kg at least.(08-01-2018, 07:41 AM)genao87 Wrote:(07-06-2018, 07:47 AM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: The prehistoric lions were stronger than modern pantheras, and their size were taller too, thus it could grown larger.  (09-10-2018, 09:26 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(09-10-2018, 08:33 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: To be honest, Ngandong tiger may not as huge as we image, the largest felines in history were prehistoric lions and giant machairodontinaes . So the femur of 480mm was probably from an average Ngandong Tiger! Didn't know that was the largest recorded femur of any big cat. Trying to understand 100% what your saying. The largest femur of any cat? So this Tiger as far as we know is the largest recorded cat in history? If so then you made my day lol. What about the false saber cats...the Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae? Are they consider cats again or just still separate? Also about Spinosaurus, there were new fossils recently?? If so did they changed it back to bipedal dinosaur instead of a possible Nimravidae? I cannot see Spino defeating T. Rex on land if it was quadrupedal like dinosaur. (09-11-2018, 05:51 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: Well Guate, I had read about your conclusion that the American Lion's maximum weight is 351kg according to the Christiansen&Harris's speculation in 2009, but the 351kg was based on the 458MM skull specimen, not the biggest one, as a matter of fact, if you base on the 468MM skull specimen, the American Lion's maximum weight can up to 400kg at least. No, if we use the largest skull from California, the weight is no more than 380 kg, and rememebr that ALL the weights are especulations, especially the ridiculously large of Anyonge (1993) of up to 540 kg. No cat in natural history, apparte from the obese ligers, had ever weighed that. I estimate that the largest Panthera (spelaea) fossilis, based in its skull, was up to 400 kg, but not more, P. atrox was smaller, so it was lighter. Panthera atrox was not exceptional, in fact, its robustness is just correlated with its size. Is a large cat, it need large bones. (09-11-2018, 05:18 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: Sadly, there is no evidence that this is skin from P. atrox, the authors only "labeled" as that because the original person that discovered the fragment believed that it was from a "cat". Check the paper and you will see. Please, check the document of Dr Barnett Ross and you will why HE is not agree with the new results. After all, morphology had created confusion before, while the genetic evidence is better. Remember who is Dr Ross by the way, so his opinion on the case is very valid. (09-11-2018, 08:51 PM)genao87 Wrote: So the femur of 480mm was probably from an average Ngandong Tiger! Didn't know that was the largest recorded femur of any big cat. Trying to understand 100% what your saying. The largest femur of any cat? So this Tiger as far as we know is the largest recorded cat in history? If so then you made my day lol. Yes, the femur of the Ngandong tiger (Panthera tigris soloensis) with its 480 mm in greatest length is the largest femur recorded for any cat, living or prehistoric, and is published. However, the specimens of the largest skulls of Panthera (spelaea) fossilis with skulls of over 480 mm may had slightly larger femurs. Now the thing is that we know many many many fossils of cave "lions", so we know they largest and smallest size, we can create averages and even we can distinguish sex. With the Ngandong tiger is not posible because we know very few elements (only 7-8 specimens and are not related). So with such a small sample we must remember that the posibilities to found a "giant" specimen is ridiculously small, check how much time took to found the Tyrannosaurus rex "Sue"! So in Paleonthology is normally suposed that the fosills that we found are from "average" specimens, because an average sized animal is the most common in the ecosystem. This indicates that those fossils from the Ngandong tiger are probably just average sized specimens, not the largest specimen that the species can produce, you know what I mean? So, all the bones (skull of c.380 mm, dentitions Pm4 and m1 of the same length that modern tigers, and humerus slightly longer than moder ones too) suggest an animal of the same size than the modern Bengal/Amur tiger, and with those lengths those tigers were probably about 210-220 cm in head body and weights of 260-300 kg. The femur is larger with 480 mm and suggest an animal of 230 cm in head-body "straight" and 360-370 kg. But these were among the must common specimens, so the extremely large animals of this species are still unknown and now with the new large mandible of c.300 mm reported by @tigerluver adn @GrizzlyClaws there are new records of tigers larger than we previously believed. Based on this, it seems that the largest tigers of the Pleistocene and the largest "lion-like" cats of the Pleistocene are in parity. On the Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae, there are not cats "per se", there are they own family, by the way the largest of them Barbourofelis fricki was no larger than an average sized lion, with shoulder height of c.90 cm and a weight of about 225 kg (Anton, 2013). When I said "new" fossils of Spinosaurus, I was refering to the last discoveries in the last few years. Check that Spinosaurus was discovered with a very fragementary fossil since the begining of the years 1910's and since the destruction of the fossils in the WWII, there was practically no new discovery until almoust 90 years latter! And what we had with the new bones, a completelly new animal, a short legged and aquatic dinosaur, very large but also very sleak, addapted to eat fish, not to fight other carnivore dinosaurs. So this is my point, when we make an analysis of a species with such a few bones our results are going to be limitted, but with more research and even founding new specimens, we can get better conclusions and now there is some posibilty to check the variations of the Spinosaurus (from 10 to 15 meters depending of the specimen). |
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