ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

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peter

Co-owner of Wildfact

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Joined: Mar 2014

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#2,798

11 hours ago

RETURN 80

Many thanks for the additional information (referring to posts 2,794, 2,795 and, in particular, 2,797 and 2,798). Those interested in the evolution of tigers in northeastern Asia no doubt found their way. If you have time, it would be appreciated if you could post a bit more about the two 'waves' from China. During the first wave, it's quite likely tigers encountered cave lions (also referring to Baryshnikov's publication about bones of carnivores found in a number of caves in southeastern Russia).

In this post, I want to return to a table I posted in the thread 'Amur Tigers' not so long ago. I'm referring to this table:

*This image is copyright of its original author

You posted additional information about tiger 04, which was poached in Heilongjiang. As a result, we now know it was a young adult male of approximately 170 kg (and not 161,1 kg) ranging between 37-50 months of age. This means I (referring to your post in the thread 'Amur Tigers') can now use it in a table that has information about the skull size of young adult wild male Amur tigers. This table is necessary, because I have some doubts about the age (of the former owner) of some of the skulls used in 'Phenotypic plasticity determines differences between the skulls of tigers from mainland Asia' (Cooper, DM) et al, Royal Society Open Science, 2022).

The table above has information about 14 tigers. Of these, 10 belong to Panthera tigris altaica. The question is if you know a bit more about skulls 02, 05, 06, 09, 10, 11 and 12. Did the skulls belong to wild Amur tigers? Is there information about the age of the former owners of these skulls? When were they acquired? Using the table, my guess for now is skulls 02, 06, 10 and 11 belonged to adults. With 'adult', to be complete, I mean 5 years (and older) for females and 6 years (and older) for males.

As to the skull of the heaviest Amur tigress on record.

In an article about the Morden-Graves expedition in the 1929-1930 winter in northeastern Asia, there's a paragraph about the Amur tiger. It has detailed information about the length and weight of 2 males and 1 female. V. Mazak ('Der Tiger', third edition, 1983), after a bit of research, discovered the males were measured in different ways. One of them was measured 'over curves', whereas the other was measured 'between pegs' after he had been skinned (...). There was some confusion about the weight as well. Mazak found that one of the males had been weighed without the skin (...). The female apparently was measured 'between pegs'. The article has information about the skulls of the 2 males, but I didn't see anything about the female. If her skull, as you wrote, really was 286 mm in greatest total length, chances are she was a young adult. My guess is at least one of the males (I'm referring to the male with a skull with a greatest total length of 335 mm) was a young adult as well. Where did you find the information about the skull of the tigress?