(09-09-2018, 02:39 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: The lion skull of 432 mm – 17 inches long.
In the old debates of AVA forum, when I investigated all the records of lions and tigers, completely focused on sizes, I found that this skull of 17 inches reported by Rowland Ward was, in fact, the largest skull on record and by far the most massive. Incredibly, it says that it was housed in the Berlin Museum, which added credibility to the record, but I must confess that as this was an “Owner’s measurements” figure, I always had my reserves whit it.
However, during my retirement from the forum, I continued with my investigations and I found something very interesting. When I searched for the largest lion skulls actually measured, I checked again the table of Dr Patterson in his book “The Lions of Tsavo”, and here it is:
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*This image is copyright of its original author
I noted that the largest skull was of 16 inches long and 10.7 inches wide (406.4 mm by 271.8) which is a record itself and is says that was collected in the 1909 safari. The reference was “Roosevelt & Heller, 1914” so I search it and guess what, I found it!
The book's name is “Life-Histories of African Game Animals” by Theodore Roosevelt and Edmund Heller, published in 1914 (fully available online). Is very good book, full of stories and also measurements of animals, for those who like to collect them. In page No. 225 I found this jewel, check it:
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*This image is copyright of its original author
The first part Roosevelt records the size of the skulls of East African lions, he says that in the National Museum of British East Africa the largest skull was of 373.0 mm, the average of the 15 old males is of 358.8 mm and the smallest male is of 349.2 mm. Check that these are specimens housed in the museum and not reported in a hunting record book. The figures are similar to those from Roberts (1951) for the specimens labeled as “L. l. massaicus”. It seems that about 360 mm is a good average for a male lion in the East of Africa.
Latter it came the “bomb”: Roosevelt says that the largest skull in Rowland Ward's records came from a male in the Berlin Museum from a South African specimen that lived in the Transvaal Zoological Gardens of Delagoa Bay, so guess what, that is exactly the same information of the large skull in Rowland Ward’s Records of Big game until the edition of 1914. More on the case, Roosevelt says that “The length of this skull, as measured by Heller, is 16 1/16 inches.” This is 408 mm or 16.08 inches (Patterson (2004) put only 16.0 inches) and “The greatest zygomatic width of this skull is 10 11/16 inches.” This is 271 mm or 10.7 inches like Patterson (2004). So the information with Ward (1914) matches and the measurements with Patterson (2004) also match, but why the size in Ward's is larger? Well, Roosevelt says “Ward records this skull also as the longest, but overstates its length, giving it as 17 inches”. So that is the reason, the size is incorrect in Ward (1914) and the origin is incorrect in Patterson (2004).
Interesting, the widest skull was of 277 mm but it is a captive specimen in USA and obviously affected by the confinement, this is clearly stated by Hollister (1917), check the table.
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*This image is copyright of its original author
In the document “The Three-Dimensional Morphological Effects of Captivity“ of 2014, Dr Hartstone-Rose and his team measured 20 skulls from adult male lions, 10 captive and 10 wild, and the extremes are these:
** Wild:
Longest: Sp. 155443 – GSL 373.2 and ZW 235.2
Widest: Sp. 162913 – GSL 368.6 and ZW 251.1
** Captive
Longest: Sp. 254455 – GSL 387.8 and ZW 251.5
Widest: Sp. 172677 – GSL 371.6 and ZW 270.1
Again, the captive lions surpass the wild ones and produces high figures. The wild ones match the records from wild males from Roberts (1951).
For the moment, the widest skull from a male lion came from two specimens of 256 mm from South Africa. There is skull with a wide of almost 270 mm in the graphic of Patterson (2004) from Tsavo and other two specimens labelled as “Panthera leo leo”, which means that may belong from any part from the Sub-saharan region, but now that we know that captive specimens are included in the graphic, I don’t know how accurate it is, especially with the previous confusion. however it seems interesting that the second wides male in Hollister's (1917) table is of 264 mm (GSL 363 mm) and the widest skull of Hartstone-Rose et al. (2014) is of 270.1 mm (GSL 371.6). Believe it nor not it match the two skulls labeled as "Panthera leo leo" in the Patterson (2004) graphic, so the only remaining lion skull over 260 mm in ZW is that of the Tsavo male, only the time will tell what I am going to found about it.
Conclusion:
The largest lion skull actually recorded came from a captive specimen that had a greatest skull length of 408 mm and a zygomatic wide of 271 mm; the skull originated at South Africa, from a specimen that lived in the Transvaal Zoological Gardens of Delagoa Bay. That is the true of this specimen. The skull was not of 17 inches - 432 mm, was not a wild specimen and was not from East Africa. The current longest wild male measured by scientists is a skull of 401 mm from Southern Africa (Roberts, 1951), and the wild/captive male of 402 mm measured by Mazák (2013 - 1983), from Ethiopia. There are first hand hunting records of skull of 406 mm (Stevenson-Hamilton) and up to 419 mm (Vaugan Kirby), but the problem is that they don’t describe the method how they measured its skull (with calipers, squares at the tips or with a tape) and if they included, or not, the mandible, which is important according with the detractors of the old hunting records.
Hope this helps and clarify the case ones for all.
So in your opinion, the biggest lion's skull record is not the 432 mm? is should be a 419 mm? BTW, the biggest East African lion's skull is 408 mm, although it is smaller than South African lion, however, the skull's relative value is better. compared with the 432 mm skull, it just less 4 mm in the width
ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - B - THE LION (Panthera leo)
