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

[Smilodon-Rex]

(07-05-2018, 12:07 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:

(07-05-2018, 07:27 AM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote: During the pleistocene, Japan and Indonesia are connected with Mainland Asia, which could  let tigers expanded  to these territory. At that period, Indonesia was a peninsula not a islands, where the ecosystem could be more likely as modern India，tropical jungle and savanna mixed together(It looks like a landscape of the jungle book the film). 
Ngandong Tigers were living in that environment, their average sizes just equivalent to big populations of modern Bengal Tigers, however, some of the individuals were very huge, even could be grown to over 350kg closed to prehistoric Lions(although it wasn't huge as them）.
Meanwhile, tigers in Japan were couldn't grown bigger even smaller, compared with their mainland close relatives. In my opinion, food chain was one of the key reasons, Ngandong Tigers territory had continued lots of large-scale herbivores while the Japanese Tigers not. In pleistocene, most of the herds of herbivores in North-East Asia were gathered at mainland not a peninsula, while in South-East Asia, the stable and predominant ecosystem attracted more herds of herbivores came in，peninsula could also provided better conditions for large-scale beasts.

@tigerluver has a large Pleistocene tiger mandible under his collection. The location of the specimen was actually from the Padang highlands of Sumatra, and the fossil level belonged to the late Pleistocene which was supposed to be less than 100 KYA.

The overall mandible is estimated to be in between 310-330 mm which provides us a rendition of an approximate 480 mm skull.

This specimen was morphologically and chronologically closer to the modern tigers, and also being larger than the Ngandong tiger specimens that we recognized previously.

There could have many larger unknown specimens among the Pleistocene big cats, and we might not know how many exactly.

According to the estimates, 480 mm skull's Ngandong tiger may just weighted over 350 kg, although it couldn't huge as prehistoric lions, it still have competence to hunt Stegodon in territory. 

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*This image is copyright of its original author

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