Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

Loving the revived discussion. Sorry I can't keep up, been very busy. The impending hurricane has given me a few moments off, so if you have any direct questions for me please PM or respond to this post and I will do my best to reply ASAP. Reply

[GrizzlyClaws]

Sorry for the sloppy comparison, but it does look like the Pleistocene tiger mandible being significantly larger than the 309 mm mandible.

What do you guys think?

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply

[GuateGojira]

Sorry for the delay @GrizzlyClaws, I am working in a completelly new computer and I needed to instal Photoshop again.

Here is the comparison of teh tiger mandible with the mandibles of P. spelaea/atrox:

*This image is copyright of its original author

 The mandible is scales with with scale bar of 50 mm. The tiger mandible is very large, that is for sure, the Panthera atrox mandible is wider in the ramus, but the mandibles a to d are still massive and by far the largest of the group. I can only image the size of those skulls. Reply

[tigerluver]

The scale bar is inaccurate in Sotnikova and Foronova unfortunately. The bottom mandible is ID'd LAC2901-3 and measures 310 mm. By the scale bar, it inaccurately measures 360 mm. One can measure that bar and check this themselves. Always remember to the check the scale bar for accuracy. The last time I remember seeing an accurate scale bar was in works by Per Christiansen.

For a more accurate comparison, real measurements need to be used. I can't release all measurements yet to protect against plagiarism (one can still use the ruler for a rough measurement) but here is a better standard for scale. The AP diameter of the fragmented mandible canine is 35 mm. LAC2901-3 has a inferior canine AP diameter of 30.4 mm. That will give you a more accurate scale. Reply

[GrizzlyClaws]

That's why I only used the ruler within the mandible picture, not the scale bar from the Panthera atrox picture.

BTW, even the Panthera atrox mandible has been scaled up to 360 mm, it still looks barely larger than the tiger mandible.

I think the full tiger mandible should be about 330 mm, which would put the GSL on par with the largest Panthera fossilis skull. Reply

[GuateGojira]

That is a good point @tigerluver, thank you fro the clarification. So the scale bar is not accurate, At least we can know the size of the Panthera atrox mandible, but for the larger cave lions? Is a pitty that such errors still happen even in per review documents.

By the way, I tried to reconstruct the mandibles with modern tigers, check what I got:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The left one is with a mainland tiger (Williams et al., 2015. ‘Skullduggery’: Lions Align and Their Mandibles Rock!) and the other is from a Island tiger (Christiansen, 2012. The Making of a Monster: Postnatal Ontogenetic Changes in Craniomandibular Shape in the Great Sabercat Smilodon). As you can see, but are published in scientific documents. I don't know, but I think that the mandibles look too short. Also the body of the fossil mandible was shorter and wider in both cases.

Tell want do you think, or if you have better tiger mandibles to make the comparison. Reply

[GrizzlyClaws]

(09-12-2018, 09:05 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: That is a good point @tigerluver, thank you fro the clarification. So the scale bar is not accurate, At least we can know the size of the Panthera atrox mandible, but for the larger cave lions? Is a pitty that such errors still happen even in per review documents.

By the way, I tried to reconstruct the mandibles with modern tigers, check what I got:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The left one is with a mainland tiger (Williams et al., 2015. ‘Skullduggery’: Lions Align and Their Mandibles Rock!) and the other is from a Island tiger (Christiansen, 2012. The Making of a Monster: Postnatal Ontogenetic Changes in Craniomandibular Shape in the Great Sabercat Smilodon). As you can see, but are published in scientific documents. I don't know, but I think that the mandibles look too short. Also the body of the fossil mandible was shorter and wider in both cases.

Tell want do you think, or if you have better tiger mandibles to make the comparison.

Oddly, all Pleistocene big cats got larger mandibular condyle, that's why the reconstruction with the modern big cat mandible would make them looked too short. Reply

[tigerluver]

@GuateGojira On pages 55-57 I made some overlay comparisons. As of now I have been not able to find a good match, but maybe I’ll find one when I visit some collections. 

I scaled with body height and it appears you scaled with the most proximal end of the fragment which would explain why the body was always thicker in your overlays. In my hypothesis, the mandible likely had a taller vertical ramus in comparison to the body.

In the end, I will use multivariate regression to come up with an exact number for GSL and mandible length. The data collection for that will be a few months away. 

The 310 mm mandible (LAC 2900-3) is actually from the second largest skull of P. atrox, which measured 458 mm if I remember correctly. The canine of the fragment is quite larger and the M1 if it were complete would have been about the same size if not a smidge larger. Considering tigers have proportionaly shorter teeth when corrected for allometry, the fragment should be larger than LAC 2900-3.

@GrizzlyClaws good eye. Another interesting thing about the fragment is the anterior shift of the dentition. If you note that the snout terminates just about where the mandibular dentition do, this trait hints at a shorter, pudgier, and wider snout. Reply

[GuateGojira]

Great information @tigerluver and @GrizzlyClaws. So, for the moment we must wait for the correct comparison.

I made another comparison, this time with 4 mandibles, three from mainland (with its sex) and a male from Java.

*This image is copyright of its original author

The result is the same, I feel like the mandible looks somewhat short, but your comparison will be better, that is for sure.

Greetings. Reply

[GrizzlyClaws]

In conclusion, which tiger group this mandible had showed more affiliation to? Mainland or Sunda?

Since the broader snout should be a trait that belonged to the Mainland tiger group. Reply

[GrizzlyClaws]

(09-12-2018, 10:12 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Great information @tigerluver and @GrizzlyClaws. So, for the moment we must wait for the correct comparison.

I made another comparison, this time with 4 mandibles, three from mainland (with its sex) and a male from Java.

*This image is copyright of its original author

The result is the same, I feel like the mandible looks somewhat short, but your comparison will be better, that is for sure.

Greetings.

Apart from the mandibular condyle, this mandible looks super correlated with the modern Javan tiger.

I guess this matches with the aforementioned theory proposed by @tigerluver; it was a more likely a prototype of the modern Sunda tiger, yet this contemporary specimen wasn't exposed to the insular dwarfism, that's why its size remained the same as its Ngandong ancestor. Reply

[genao87]

(09-11-2018, 10:56 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(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.     

  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.

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).

I see,  so the P. Tigers and the Cave "Lions" we can assume would be roughly the same size.

For Barbourofelis and Nimravidae...was more interested if these guys were cats again since there was some talk in the past that they should be part of the Cat Family.  I guess that is not the case.   As for Spinosaurus,  I thought there were more fossils found since there was new news about it being a bad swimmer.   Strange how it could be a bad swimmer yet designed for water like a croc.   I was hoping this meant it could be more bipedal looking like in the past so it can be more of a match against other predatory dinos such as T. Rex.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scien...95758716=1 Reply

[genao87]

(09-12-2018, 07:27 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Sorry for the delay @GrizzlyClaws, I am working in a completelly new computer and I needed to instal Photoshop again.

Here is the comparison of teh tiger mandible with the mandibles of P. spelaea/atrox:

*This image is copyright of its original author

 The mandible is scales with with scale bar of 50 mm. The tiger mandible is very large, that is for sure, the Panthera atrox mandible is wider in the ramus, but the mandibles a to d are still massive and by far the largest of the group. I can only image the size of those skulls.

holy cow,  that tiger mandible dwarfs everything.   i will wait for tigerluver's results on all of this. Reply

[GuateGojira]

(09-12-2018, 09:28 PM)genao87 Wrote: holy cow,  that tiger mandible dwarfs everything.   i will wait for tigerluver's results on all of this.

Yes, let's wait for @tigerluver study, it will be the best thing to do. Reply

[tigerluver]

(09-12-2018, 08:03 PM)genao87 Wrote:

(09-11-2018, 10:56 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:

(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.     

  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.

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).

I see,  so the P. Tigers and the Cave "Lions" we can assume would be roughly the same size.

For Barbourofelis and Nimravidae...was more interested if these guys were cats again since there was some talk in the past that they should be part of the Cat Family.  I guess that is not the case.   As for Spinosaurus,  I thought there were more fossils found since there was new news about it being a bad swimmer.   Strange how it could be a bad swimmer yet designed for water like a croc.   I was hoping this meant it could be more bipedal looking like in the past so it can be more of a match against other predatory dinos such as T. Rex.  

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scien...95758716=1

One should be careful extrapolating femur length from skull length in giants. This is why I've distanced myself from body weight estimates from skulls for a while now. In short, giant head cats probably did not have as giant bodies.


This year, Sabol published a very rare find of a rather complete and very large specimen of P. spealea in Montane record of the late Pleistocene Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810) from the Západné Tatry Mountains (northern Slovakia). The skull of the specimen was 437 mm. Scaling with modern lions, that would have been associated with a femur of around 460 mm. In reality, the femurs of the specimen averaged only 433 mm, smaller than the GSL. This is not too shocking, as negative allometry between skull size and body size is something I've mentioned for a while. In species with long snouts (i.e. lions, Smilodon), the skull size to femur/long bone ratio is usually greater than that in species with shorter snouts (i.e. jaguar, tiger). In other words, a longer snout means a bigger head a to relatively shorter long bone.

Have a look at the attached document. It's rare to find such data and even rarer for it to be from such a large cat. Reply