There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
11-06-2018, 04:22 AM( This post was last modified: 11-06-2018, 04:25 AM by tigerluver )
(11-04-2018, 12:00 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:21 AM)tigerluver Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 10:44 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 12:25 AM)tigerluver Wrote: @Wolverine , I have not read of the released measurements for those fossils since their photos showed up years ago. However, I am certain larger P. fossilis are already on record. Let's use an ideal 200 kg lion as the isometric comparison.
The formula is:
Mass (fossil) = (Measurement of fossil)/(Measurement of extant specimen)^3 * Mass of the extant specimen.
Firstly, the 484.7 mm Chateau skull (Marciszak et al. 2014). A 200 kg modern lion could have a skull about 380 mm long. Applying these numbers to the aforementioned formula results in a mass of 415 kg.
Next, the 465 mm ulna (Reichenau 1908). A 200 kg lion could have an ulna about 385 mm long. Calculate... this P. fossilis weighed 352 kg.
Finally, the giant 192 mm MTIII (Marciszak et al. 2014). A 200 kg lion could have an MTIII of 145 mm. Calculate... a whopping 464 kg. Perhaps this is somewhat of an overestimate if P. fossilis was even longer limb-wise than the modern lion, but we have no skeletons to support this assumption other than the fact that its descendant, P. atrox, was indeed proportionally longer limb-wise. Moreover, MTIIIs vary a lot between individuals in relation to body size/mass. Nonetheless, the specimen was likely no less than 400 kg.
Both the MTIII and ulna can be confounded by an increased cursoriality in P. fossilis but the former much more so. The elongated skull of P. fossilis can also confound the isometric comparison to a degree.
From the scant fossil record, it is quite apparent P. fossilis consistently produced what would be giants by modern standards. For instance, many of the fragmented mandibles were likely from skulls that exceeded 400 mm. By probability and comparison of samples, P. fossilis was likely larger than P. atrox as well. The excessively large long bones of P. fossilis also hint that 130-140 cm at the shoulder would be comfortably attained by some of the largest specimens.
@epaiva I will post some photos soon, sorry about the wait.
Was the 192 mm MTIII specimen larger than the Chateau skull?
If we use the respective body parts of a 200 kg lion as the samples, it does appear so.
Maybe the 192 mm MTIII specimen could acquire a skull close to 500 mm which is the absolute maximum for any Panthera specimen?
The MTIII is a difficult one. One issue is that when calculating the range of weights produced by isometry, the range I found was as low as 400 kg to as high a over 500 kg. In other words, the bone is not that well correlated to body size, but is nonetheless from a top 10 Panthera specimen. The second issue is that if P. fossilis is more cursorial, the MTIII would be proportionately elongated and isometrically comparing the bone to that of an extant lion will heavily overestimate the weight. Thus extrapolating other body parts is filled with uncertainty. A skull length range of 450-500 mm would not be illogical in my opinion.
The issue can be applied to the skull. P. spelaea had a big skull for its bones, bigger than the extant lion. For instance, the specimen is Sabol (2018) has a femur to skull ratio of 0.99, which is distinctly less than extant lion generally as the number in P. leo is over 1.00. That means while applying the 484.7 mm skull to P. leo ratios, we'd think the femur would be 500 mm. Likely in reality the femur of the specimen was 470-480 mm, which is not that much bigger than the largest P. spelaea (470 mm femur from Germany mentioned by Deidrich). Of course still absurdly gigantic, but not what P. leo comparisons would lead one to believe. Another confounding issue is that long snouts usually means proportionately longer skulls for a body mass/size. We know that P. fossilis did have a longer snout that P. spelaea, likely making the long bone to skull ratio somewhat lesser in P. fossilis as compared to P. spelaea, further decreasing long bone length extrapolations by a bit. It is for this reason I feel the 465 mm has been underestimated via isometry or the 484.7 mm skull at least overestimated. Unless P. fossilis is exceptionally cursorial, a 465 mm ulna should give a femur of around 480 mm, matching the 484.7 mm skull. Now one can see why mass estimations vary so much, there are too many confounding variables. These two specimens were likely body size-wise just about the same as the 480 mm Ngandong femur for these reasons. Mass is a whole different rabbit hole in its own as the tiger and lion lineages hold mass differently. I have lately avoided addressing the complex topic and just give pure isometry estimates but hopefully this makes sense.
As a whole, the closer the species temporally to an extant species, the more accurate the single bone estimates and vice versa.
As for the rank of the cursoriality for the Pleistocene pantherine cats, it could be something like that?
I still need to read up on the proposed P. s. intermedia but looking through old notes I tried comparing P. fossilis and P. spelaea cursoriality by comparing the MTIII to femur ratio. The data used is from Marciszak et al. (2014) for P. fossilis and P. spelaea I took from a few other places too.
As a disclosure, both the small sample size and fact that we do not have a multi-bone specimen of P. fossilis may (and probably do) affect the accuracy of the conclusions.
I first averaged the lengths of the femurs (n=4) and MTIII (n=11) of P. fossilis. The same was done for P. spelaea (femur: n=12, MTIII: n=44). Now it is not possible to do a t-test for ratios as again, the data is not paired by individual but rather just a population average. The next best thing I could think of would be to bootstrap in a way (certainly not real bootstrapping as the data does not allow) and recombine the femur to MTIII ratio to produce multiple numbers. To do so, I used the confidence intervals of the averages and considered them their own unique data point. So for P. fossilis, we had the following data:
Avg. femur length: 382 mm
- Low 95% CI: 339 mm
- High 95% CI: 424 mm
Avg. MTIII length: 156 mm
- Low 95% CI: 145 mm
- High 95% CI: 166 mm
For P. spelaea:
Avg. femur length: 407 mm
- Low 95% CI: 391 mm
- High 95% CI: 422 mm
Avg. MTIII length: 141 mm
- Low 95% CI: 139 mm
- High 95% CI: 143 mm
Then the ratios were populated as follows:
Low 95% CI MTIII/Low 95% CI Femur
High 95% CI MTIII/High 95% CI Femur
Avg. MTIII/Avg. Femur
Low 95% CI MTIII/High 95% CI Femur
High 95% CI MTIII/Low 95% CI Femur
Avg. 95% CI MTIII/Low 95% CI Femur
Avg. 95% CI MTIII/High 95% CI Femur
Etc.
So essentially a whole lot of permutations (9).
The range for P. fossilis was 0.37-0.47 (Avg. 0.41) . It was 0.33-0.37 for P. spelaea (Avg. 0.35). A t-test shows significant difference but there has already been too many theoretical calculations for me to put too much value in the t-test.
This analysis means P. fossilis had a longer MTIII, meaning it was more cursorial. This could very tentatively be supported by the fact that the distal long bones of P. fossilis are generally larger than those of P. spelaea, but the proximal long bones are not as consistently larger.
Far from conclusive as I'd rather have actual paired data but it's better than nothing.
On that note, I'll again stress the risk of extrapolating one bone length from another with the lack of data on the extinct species. By the ratios described above, the 192 mm MTIII would have a femur measuring c. 470 mm. This would not produce a 500 mm skull in all likelihood but rather a skull equal to or slightly smaller than the Chateau giant. The previous mass estimations I provided were under the assumption that P. fossilis was a P. leo clone but as people seem to be interested I've detailed all the caveats.
Again I will stress the aforementioned is all very theoretical, we have 4 P. fossilis femurs only. Nonetheless, food for thought.
11-06-2018, 04:33 AM( This post was last modified: 11-06-2018, 04:36 AM by Ghari Sher )
(11-06-2018, 02:11 AM)Shadow Wrote:
(11-06-2018, 01:46 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:59 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 08:13 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:50 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:40 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 12:00 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:21 AM)tigerluver Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 10:44 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 12:25 AM)tigerluver Wrote: @Wolverine , I have not read of the released measurements for those fossils since their photos showed up years ago. However, I am certain larger P. fossilis are already on record. Let's use an ideal 200 kg lion as the isometric comparison.
The formula is:
Mass (fossil) = (Measurement of fossil)/(Measurement of extant specimen)^3 * Mass of the extant specimen.
Firstly, the 484.7 mm Chateau skull (Marciszak et al. 2014). A 200 kg modern lion could have a skull about 380 mm long. Applying these numbers to the aforementioned formula results in a mass of 415 kg.
Next, the 465 mm ulna (Reichenau 1908). A 200 kg lion could have an ulna about 385 mm long. Calculate... this P. fossilis weighed 352 kg.
Finally, the giant 192 mm MTIII (Marciszak et al. 2014). A 200 kg lion could have an MTIII of 145 mm. Calculate... a whopping 464 kg. Perhaps this is somewhat of an overestimate if P. fossilis was even longer limb-wise than the modern lion, but we have no skeletons to support this assumption other than the fact that its descendant, P. atrox, was indeed proportionally longer limb-wise. Moreover, MTIIIs vary a lot between individuals in relation to body size/mass. Nonetheless, the specimen was likely no less than 400 kg.
Both the MTIII and ulna can be confounded by an increased cursoriality in P. fossilis but the former much more so. The elongated skull of P. fossilis can also confound the isometric comparison to a degree.
From the scant fossil record, it is quite apparent P. fossilis consistently produced what would be giants by modern standards. For instance, many of the fragmented mandibles were likely from skulls that exceeded 400 mm. By probability and comparison of samples, P. fossilis was likely larger than P. atrox as well. The excessively large long bones of P. fossilis also hint that 130-140 cm at the shoulder would be comfortably attained by some of the largest specimens.
@epaiva I will post some photos soon, sorry about the wait.
Was the 192 mm MTIII specimen larger than the Chateau skull?
If we use the respective body parts of a 200 kg lion as the samples, it does appear so.
Maybe the 192 mm MTIII specimen could acquire a skull close to 500 mm which is the absolute maximum for any Panthera specimen?
The MTIII is a difficult one. One issue is that when calculating the range of weights produced by isometry, the range I found was as low as 400 kg to as high a over 500 kg. In other words, the bone is not that well correlated to body size, but is nonetheless from a top 10 Panthera specimen. The second issue is that if P. fossilis is more cursorial, the MTIII would be proportionately elongated and isometrically comparing the bone to that of an extant lion will heavily overestimate the weight. Thus extrapolating other body parts is filled with uncertainty. A skull length range of 450-500 mm would not be illogical in my opinion.
The issue can be applied to the skull. P. spelaea had a big skull for its bones, bigger than the extant lion. For instance, the specimen is Sabol (2018) has a femur to skull ratio of 0.99, which is distinctly less than extant lion generally as the number in P. leo is over 1.00. That means while applying the 484.7 mm skull to P. leo ratios, we'd think the femur would be 500 mm. Likely in reality the femur of the specimen was 470-480 mm, which is not that much bigger than the largest P. spelaea (470 mm femur from Germany mentioned by Deidrich). Of course still absurdly gigantic, but not what P. leo comparisons would lead one to believe. Another confounding issue is that long snouts usually means proportionately longer skulls for a body mass/size. We know that P. fossilis did have a longer snout that P. spelaea, likely making the long bone to skull ratio somewhat lesser in P. fossilis as compared to P. spelaea, further decreasing long bone length extrapolations by a bit. It is for this reason I feel the 465 mm has been underestimated via isometry or the 484.7 mm skull at least overestimated. Unless P. fossilis is exceptionally cursorial, a 465 mm ulna should give a femur of around 480 mm, matching the 484.7 mm skull. Now one can see why mass estimations vary so much, there are too many confounding variables. These two specimens were likely body size-wise just about the same as the 480 mm Ngandong femur for these reasons. Mass is a whole different rabbit hole in its own as the tiger and lion lineages hold mass differently. I have lately avoided addressing the complex topic and just give pure isometry estimates but hopefully this makes sense.
As a whole, the closer the species temporally to an extant species, the more accurate the single bone estimates and vice versa.
As for the rank of the cursoriality for the Pleistocene pantherine cats, it could be something like that?
On this issue, I have my own questions regarding Panthera spelaea.
Diedrich & Rothschild (2012) concluded that the cave lion was most likely a pursuit hunter based on bone exostoses on the brachialis muscle attachment point on two individuals, one from the Eemian and the other Weichselian, out of a considerable sample of bones (NISP=1208, MNI Unknown) indicating the use of the paw-sweep used in running, which apparently supports pursuit hunting, as opposed to extant lions which are ambush hunters:
Quote:Exostoses in Smilodon, H. crenatidens and H. latidens are found in the flexor tendons of the upper limb (Heald, 1989; McCall et al., 2003; Moodie, 1923; Shermis, 1983; Turner, 1997) and have been used as evidence for grappling behavior (Rothschild, 2011). The patterns of exostoses in P. l. spelaea have a different distribution (brachialis muscle, reflecting flexion activities), instead supporting the hypothesis of pursuit behavior. The distribution of exostoses (Fig. 7) and enthesial reaction otherwise identifies P. l. spelaea as a pursuit, rather than ambush predator.
However, Schellhorn (2014) concluded based on ulna dimensions that the cave lion bore adaptations closer to forest cats compared to the extant lion, i.e. seemed to be less cursorial, among other things.
Quote:The included fossil cats Dinofelis piveteaui, P. spelaea, and S. fatalis all distinctly plot within the closed or forest habitat in the scatter plots (Figs. 1b, 2e, f).
In this case the sample size was not impressive, only a single ulna was used in this analysis.
And as has been discussed in the literature before, e.g. Sabol (2018), the cave lion was more robustly built than the African lion, and does indeed share similarities to the tiger in some of its features, including in the limb bones.
By scaling the cats down to the same shoulder height, I compared P. atrox, P. leo, and P. spelaea skeletons to each other (left-right, the cave lion skeleton was digitally modified by a friend from an image from this article https://3dprint.com/216653/reconstructing-cave-lion/)
*This image is copyright of its original author
Looking side-by-side, P. spelaea looks somewhat similar proportionally to P. leo, but it is overall noticeably more robust. I don't know exactly what implications this would have for cursoriality, but intuitively one would think it to be a less cursorial, more ambush-oriented predator.
Indeed, assuming the hypothesis of a derivation from P. fossilis, a shortening of the cave lion's distal limbs can be inferred from @tigerluver's calculations on post #52, as we enter the late Pleistocene, which would suggest a reduction in cursoriality.
A similar situation is seen in the cave lion's main competitor, cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) which also have shortened distal limb elements, relative this time to their extant counterpart, which has also been suggested to indicate a less cursorial mode of hunting, among other things:
Quote:The crural index (tibia length/femur length) in the skeleton of Los Aprendices is 0.74, which is similar to the values of Crocuta spelaea (0.75) and Pachycrocuta brevirostris (0.74) and clearly lower than in extant C. crocuta (0.82) (Palmqvist et al., 2011). The shortening of the tibia of C. spelaea suggests a less cursorial lifestyle. Also, such shortening could provide great power and more stability to dismember and carry large parts of carcasses without dragging (Spoor, 1985; Turner and Antón, 1996; Palmqvist et al., 2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...o_Zaragoza
Of course this could also be an adaptation towards the colder climate, not just in the cave hyena but the coeval cave lion as well, to reduce the size of extremities. Cave paintings have suggested that the cat had smaller ears, an inference supported by the small ears of the cub remains, as well as the shortened tail found at least in infancy, so the scenario where limbs are also shortened does not seem implausible, but apparently this would happen alongside the retention of a cursorial mode of hunting - assuming the hypotheses of a derivation from fossilis AND the inferences of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) are correct.
Some frozen finds, such as the steppe bison blue babe, suggest a similar hunting behaviour to the extant lion, though of course the duration of the chase is hard to infer in such cases:
*This image is copyright of its original author
(Multiple lions hunting Blue Babe is a bit speculative, but that's besides the point here. A great illustration by Anton, regardless).
Unfortunately I can only attach Schellhorn (2014)'s paper because WildFact won't let me attach the Diedrich paper, but I'll make a new post and attach it there.
Any thoughts on the level of cursoriality possessed by the Late Pleistocene cave lion? Particularly in regards to the hypothesis that they were pursuit hunters? The exact answer isn't clear to me, and this is the data that I can find.
Oddly, Panthera leo looks like the one with biggest skull when the shoulder height being equalized.
When it comes to the cursoriality, Panthera spealea spelaea from the late Pleistocene looks like the one with the lowest level, and it also attained a maximum weight of 300-350 kg, very reminiscent to the largest Manchurian tigers in the history. These two felines were also highly convergently evolved.
Panthera spelaea intermedia from the early late Pleistocene was even larger at 400 kg, with a higher level of cursoriality which is considered a more primitive trait and transitional phase closer to Panthera fossilis.
Panthera spelaea spelaea should be considered as the final stabilized form of the Cave lion family, looks like its ultimate goal was to evolve morphologically closer to Panthera tigris.
So what would your thoughts be on the conclusions of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) of the lion being primarily a pursuit hunter?
It depends the chronospecies of the Cave lion, I believe the latest Cave lion was more or less an ambush hunter like the Amur tiger.
I was referring to the latest one, yes, the one which he studied. Based on pathologies he concluded that pursuit predation was their mode of hunting.
I had to check, that what is meant with ambush hunter and pursuit hunter, because I found claim, that cave lion would be pursuit hunter and lion ambush hunter in a way very odd. All big cats still are hunting in very same way. Sneaking close to prey or sometimes waiting that prey comes closer depending on situation. Then making attack and a shorter or longer pursue, but never a very long, up to what cheetah does. About 400 meters. It looks like all these big cats are in pursuit hunter category and none ambush hunter. Even though they hunt also ambushing if opportunity comes.
Then we have ambush hunters like snakes etc. And then persistence hunters like African wild dogs etc. Maybe wolves somewhere in the middle of pursuit hunting and persistence hunting.
But thinking a big cat running long distance, extant or extinct... when even cheetah can´t pursue long distances and we know perfectly well, that lions pursue many times prey some (short) distances. Also tigers do short pursuits when needed and chance to get prey in that way. That research is just telling no-brainer, nothing more or less. Sometimes researchers really are making nice reports about very clear things :) Like I would make a long report how water is wet : My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ; Maybe I missed some point here?
Good point regarding the terminology - I think what Diedrich means is that the cave lion was a persistence hunter, whereas modern lion only give moderately long chases.
Indeed this is what Churchill (2014) interprets it as when citing Rothschild & Diedrich (2012)
Quote:Interestingly, patterns of entheseal reactions on cave lion postcranial remains suggest a greater emphasis on pursuit hunting, suggesting that the Pleistocene lions may have engaged in more chasing of prey and less ambush hunting than do their modern counterparts (Rothschild and Diedrich 2012).
Diedrich contrasts this with apparent ambush hunters such as Smilodon and Homotherium.
As I have written previously, and others have pointed out, the cave lion was rather heavily built, with thicker limbs, and shorter metapodials than the modern lion, which don't seem to lend well to high amounts of cursoriality/ persistence in running.
Then again, they lived in open environments, which might have required a longer chase, but this remains speculative and their body proportions don't seem to indicate such a lifestyle. But then again, there's the pattern of pathologies.
11-06-2018, 05:21 AM( This post was last modified: 11-06-2018, 05:23 AM by Shadow )
(11-06-2018, 04:33 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-06-2018, 02:11 AM)Shadow Wrote:
(11-06-2018, 01:46 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:59 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 08:13 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:50 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:40 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 12:00 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:21 AM)tigerluver Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 10:44 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Was the 192 mm MTIII specimen larger than the Chateau skull?
If we use the respective body parts of a 200 kg lion as the samples, it does appear so.
Maybe the 192 mm MTIII specimen could acquire a skull close to 500 mm which is the absolute maximum for any Panthera specimen?
The MTIII is a difficult one. One issue is that when calculating the range of weights produced by isometry, the range I found was as low as 400 kg to as high a over 500 kg. In other words, the bone is not that well correlated to body size, but is nonetheless from a top 10 Panthera specimen. The second issue is that if P. fossilis is more cursorial, the MTIII would be proportionately elongated and isometrically comparing the bone to that of an extant lion will heavily overestimate the weight. Thus extrapolating other body parts is filled with uncertainty. A skull length range of 450-500 mm would not be illogical in my opinion.
The issue can be applied to the skull. P. spelaea had a big skull for its bones, bigger than the extant lion. For instance, the specimen is Sabol (2018) has a femur to skull ratio of 0.99, which is distinctly less than extant lion generally as the number in P. leo is over 1.00. That means while applying the 484.7 mm skull to P. leo ratios, we'd think the femur would be 500 mm. Likely in reality the femur of the specimen was 470-480 mm, which is not that much bigger than the largest P. spelaea (470 mm femur from Germany mentioned by Deidrich). Of course still absurdly gigantic, but not what P. leo comparisons would lead one to believe. Another confounding issue is that long snouts usually means proportionately longer skulls for a body mass/size. We know that P. fossilis did have a longer snout that P. spelaea, likely making the long bone to skull ratio somewhat lesser in P. fossilis as compared to P. spelaea, further decreasing long bone length extrapolations by a bit. It is for this reason I feel the 465 mm has been underestimated via isometry or the 484.7 mm skull at least overestimated. Unless P. fossilis is exceptionally cursorial, a 465 mm ulna should give a femur of around 480 mm, matching the 484.7 mm skull. Now one can see why mass estimations vary so much, there are too many confounding variables. These two specimens were likely body size-wise just about the same as the 480 mm Ngandong femur for these reasons. Mass is a whole different rabbit hole in its own as the tiger and lion lineages hold mass differently. I have lately avoided addressing the complex topic and just give pure isometry estimates but hopefully this makes sense.
As a whole, the closer the species temporally to an extant species, the more accurate the single bone estimates and vice versa.
As for the rank of the cursoriality for the Pleistocene pantherine cats, it could be something like that?
On this issue, I have my own questions regarding Panthera spelaea.
Diedrich & Rothschild (2012) concluded that the cave lion was most likely a pursuit hunter based on bone exostoses on the brachialis muscle attachment point on two individuals, one from the Eemian and the other Weichselian, out of a considerable sample of bones (NISP=1208, MNI Unknown) indicating the use of the paw-sweep used in running, which apparently supports pursuit hunting, as opposed to extant lions which are ambush hunters:
Quote:Exostoses in Smilodon, H. crenatidens and H. latidens are found in the flexor tendons of the upper limb (Heald, 1989; McCall et al., 2003; Moodie, 1923; Shermis, 1983; Turner, 1997) and have been used as evidence for grappling behavior (Rothschild, 2011). The patterns of exostoses in P. l. spelaea have a different distribution (brachialis muscle, reflecting flexion activities), instead supporting the hypothesis of pursuit behavior. The distribution of exostoses (Fig. 7) and enthesial reaction otherwise identifies P. l. spelaea as a pursuit, rather than ambush predator.
However, Schellhorn (2014) concluded based on ulna dimensions that the cave lion bore adaptations closer to forest cats compared to the extant lion, i.e. seemed to be less cursorial, among other things.
Quote:The included fossil cats Dinofelis piveteaui, P. spelaea, and S. fatalis all distinctly plot within the closed or forest habitat in the scatter plots (Figs. 1b, 2e, f).
In this case the sample size was not impressive, only a single ulna was used in this analysis.
And as has been discussed in the literature before, e.g. Sabol (2018), the cave lion was more robustly built than the African lion, and does indeed share similarities to the tiger in some of its features, including in the limb bones.
By scaling the cats down to the same shoulder height, I compared P. atrox, P. leo, and P. spelaea skeletons to each other (left-right, the cave lion skeleton was digitally modified by a friend from an image from this article https://3dprint.com/216653/reconstructing-cave-lion/)
*This image is copyright of its original author
Looking side-by-side, P. spelaea looks somewhat similar proportionally to P. leo, but it is overall noticeably more robust. I don't know exactly what implications this would have for cursoriality, but intuitively one would think it to be a less cursorial, more ambush-oriented predator.
Indeed, assuming the hypothesis of a derivation from P. fossilis, a shortening of the cave lion's distal limbs can be inferred from @tigerluver's calculations on post #52, as we enter the late Pleistocene, which would suggest a reduction in cursoriality.
A similar situation is seen in the cave lion's main competitor, cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) which also have shortened distal limb elements, relative this time to their extant counterpart, which has also been suggested to indicate a less cursorial mode of hunting, among other things:
Quote:The crural index (tibia length/femur length) in the skeleton of Los Aprendices is 0.74, which is similar to the values of Crocuta spelaea (0.75) and Pachycrocuta brevirostris (0.74) and clearly lower than in extant C. crocuta (0.82) (Palmqvist et al., 2011). The shortening of the tibia of C. spelaea suggests a less cursorial lifestyle. Also, such shortening could provide great power and more stability to dismember and carry large parts of carcasses without dragging (Spoor, 1985; Turner and Antón, 1996; Palmqvist et al., 2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...o_Zaragoza
Of course this could also be an adaptation towards the colder climate, not just in the cave hyena but the coeval cave lion as well, to reduce the size of extremities. Cave paintings have suggested that the cat had smaller ears, an inference supported by the small ears of the cub remains, as well as the shortened tail found at least in infancy, so the scenario where limbs are also shortened does not seem implausible, but apparently this would happen alongside the retention of a cursorial mode of hunting - assuming the hypotheses of a derivation from fossilis AND the inferences of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) are correct.
Some frozen finds, such as the steppe bison blue babe, suggest a similar hunting behaviour to the extant lion, though of course the duration of the chase is hard to infer in such cases:
*This image is copyright of its original author
(Multiple lions hunting Blue Babe is a bit speculative, but that's besides the point here. A great illustration by Anton, regardless).
Unfortunately I can only attach Schellhorn (2014)'s paper because WildFact won't let me attach the Diedrich paper, but I'll make a new post and attach it there.
Any thoughts on the level of cursoriality possessed by the Late Pleistocene cave lion? Particularly in regards to the hypothesis that they were pursuit hunters? The exact answer isn't clear to me, and this is the data that I can find.
Oddly, Panthera leo looks like the one with biggest skull when the shoulder height being equalized.
When it comes to the cursoriality, Panthera spealea spelaea from the late Pleistocene looks like the one with the lowest level, and it also attained a maximum weight of 300-350 kg, very reminiscent to the largest Manchurian tigers in the history. These two felines were also highly convergently evolved.
Panthera spelaea intermedia from the early late Pleistocene was even larger at 400 kg, with a higher level of cursoriality which is considered a more primitive trait and transitional phase closer to Panthera fossilis.
Panthera spelaea spelaea should be considered as the final stabilized form of the Cave lion family, looks like its ultimate goal was to evolve morphologically closer to Panthera tigris.
So what would your thoughts be on the conclusions of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) of the lion being primarily a pursuit hunter?
It depends the chronospecies of the Cave lion, I believe the latest Cave lion was more or less an ambush hunter like the Amur tiger.
I was referring to the latest one, yes, the one which he studied. Based on pathologies he concluded that pursuit predation was their mode of hunting.
I had to check, that what is meant with ambush hunter and pursuit hunter, because I found claim, that cave lion would be pursuit hunter and lion ambush hunter in a way very odd. All big cats still are hunting in very same way. Sneaking close to prey or sometimes waiting that prey comes closer depending on situation. Then making attack and a shorter or longer pursue, but never a very long, up to what cheetah does. About 400 meters. It looks like all these big cats are in pursuit hunter category and none ambush hunter. Even though they hunt also ambushing if opportunity comes.
Then we have ambush hunters like snakes etc. And then persistence hunters like African wild dogs etc. Maybe wolves somewhere in the middle of pursuit hunting and persistence hunting.
But thinking a big cat running long distance, extant or extinct... when even cheetah can´t pursue long distances and we know perfectly well, that lions pursue many times prey some (short) distances. Also tigers do short pursuits when needed and chance to get prey in that way. That research is just telling no-brainer, nothing more or less. Sometimes researchers really are making nice reports about very clear things :) Like I would make a long report how water is wet : My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ; Maybe I missed some point here?
Good point regarding the terminology - I think what Diedrich means is that the cave lion was a persistence hunter, whereas modern lion only give moderately long chases.
Indeed this is what Churchill (2014) interprets it as when citing Rothschild & Diedrich (2012)
Quote:Interestingly, patterns of entheseal reactions on cave lion postcranial remains suggest a greater emphasis on pursuit hunting, suggesting that the Pleistocene lions may have engaged in more chasing of prey and less ambush hunting than do their modern counterparts (Rothschild and Diedrich 2012).
Diedrich contrasts this with apparent ambush hunters such as Smilodon and Homotherium.
As I have written previously, and others have pointed out, the cave lion was rather heavily build, with thicker limbs, and shorter metapodials than the modern lion, which don't seem to lend well to high amounts of cursoriality/ persistence in running.
Then again, they lived in open environments, which might have required a longer chase, but this remains speculative and their body proportions don't seem to indicate such a lifestyle. But then again, there's the pattern of pathologies.
It would be interesting to discuss with Diedrich a little bit, that what kind of pursuits he was thinking about. I am now too lazy to read so closely. If I remember right, that document was wrote in quite... ponderous way. Some scientific documents are well written even though a lot of references to sources, then some are written so, that even irritating to read and figure out what is the point there. Was this document the one with all the time sources and years in the middle of text? That kind of text demands certain kind of mood to read. At least for me :)
But of course environment and type of prey forces predator to adapt to be able to hunt as "demanded". So if environment is pretty open and ambushing is difficult, predator have to be able to chase prey at least some distance. Then again that distance just can´t be too long if predator is heavy. But of course if we look at longest know pursuits of lions and bears for instance, they sometimes show surprising ability to run longer than many would believe if some of those pursuits wouldn´t be filmed.
If and when a bear can run hundreds of meters, why not some big cat... when looking at this video about a lion, not the longest pursuit, but it would be interesting to know the distance. Here this male lion was quite determined to catch this hyena, not giving up like often can be seen with faster prey.
So when male lion as quite heavy and robust animal is able to do this kind of kill, when necessary, for sure it is not unrealistic to think, that pleistocene lions were able to hunt also some distance. I think, that if we talk about persistence hunters we have to rule all big cats out of that category. But if we are thinking, that some big cats mainly attack like ambush hunters only with minimal pursuit or even one leap attacks. Then we have something like modern lion which make ambush attack or pursuit about 20-40 meters and maybe in best case... well let´s say maybe a 100 meters if relatively slow prey. Then cheetah able to go 400 meters. Maybe with pleistocene lions we could be talking about animals able to run somewhere between those distances.
When comparing to other big cats at that time which you mentioned as ambush hunters, then we would of course be talking about a relevant difference making for cave lion possible to hunt in more versatile ways and most probably more different kind of animals as prey. I mean it is of course a big difference if other can run up to 20-40 meters max and other one goes maybe 200 meters with full speed. In more open area that difference for sure can be the difference between success and failure in hunting.
But in that document Diedrich didn´t mention any estimations about distances?
(11-02-2018, 12:13 PM)Spalea Wrote: Thus I can easily admit that p. Atrox, cave lion and p. leo are different species... different species of lions ?
They are different species of Panthera's.
Here budy arise the philosophical question what does mean "lion"? Inside the genus Panthera there are/were many different species, all of them are more or less closely related. If you take a bunch of them- P.leo, P.fossilis and P.atrox, separate from other species like Panthera onca (jaguar), Panthera tigris (tiger), Panthera pardus and call them "lions", then you should create a separate taxonomic unit for "lions" inside genus Panthera. But since such a separate taxonomic unit does not exist its not clear what do you call "lions". Before many people called Pantheraatrox a "giant jaguar" and probably they also had some reasons for that.
P. atrox was called the "giant jaguar" at one point because a study (Christiansen and Harris 2009) found that its skull was more similar to that of the jaguar than the lion. Genetic testing shows this similarity is due to convergent evolution rather than a genetic proximity between P. atrox and P. onca.
In my opinion, three prehistoric lions(Panthera fossils, Panthera atrox, Panthera spalea) could also up to over 400kg maximum weight. But Panthera spalea's inner gap as big as tiger
Panthera spelaea up to 400 kg should be the earlier one in between the transitional phase of Panthera spelaea fossilis and Panthera spelaea spelaea.
Panthera spelaea spelaea was the final stabilized form of the Cave lion, and this chronospecies was 350 kg maximum, comparable to the largest Amur tiger in the history.
It's said that in later Pleistocene about after 70000 years ago, European cave lion's bodysize was smaller and not gigantic expect the South-East European population still retained the gigantic specimen, from then on, more and more gigantic cave lion's population were moved to the East, like some of the huge skull specimens from Ural mountains in Russia, on the other hand, some gigantic cave lion's skulls from North-Eastern Asia like HeiLongJiang province in China may also belonged to the European cave lions which had moved to the East.
*This image is copyright of its original author
@Spalea , is the later Pleistocene cave lion would looks like this? well one of the interesting character is later cave lions would owned the long canines like tiger，their faces also become round and short.
(11-02-2018, 12:13 PM)Spalea Wrote: Thus I can easily admit that p. Atrox, cave lion and p. leo are different species... different species of lions ?
They are different species of Panthera's.
Here budy arise the philosophical question what does mean "lion"? Inside the genus Panthera there are/were many different species, all of them are more or less closely related. If you take a bunch of them- P.leo, P.fossilis and P.atrox, separate from other species like Panthera onca (jaguar), Panthera tigris (tiger), Panthera pardus and call them "lions", then you should create a separate taxonomic unit for "lions" inside genus Panthera. But since such a separate taxonomic unit does not exist its not clear what do you call "lions". Before many people called Pantheraatrox a "giant jaguar" and probably they also had some reasons for that.
P. atrox was called the "giant jaguar" at one point because a study (Christiansen and Harris 2009) found that its skull was more similar to that of the jaguar than the lion. Genetic testing shows this similarity is due to convergent evolution rather than a genetic proximity between P. atrox and P. onca.
In my opinion, three prehistoric lions(Panthera fossils, Panthera atrox, Panthera spalea) could also up to over 400kg maximum weight. But Panthera spalea's inner gap as big as tiger
Panthera spelaea up to 400 kg should be the earlier one in between the transitional phase of Panthera spelaea fossilis and Panthera spelaea spelaea.
Panthera spelaea spelaea was the final stabilized form of the Cave lion, and this chronospecies was 350 kg maximum, comparable to the largest Amur tiger in the history.
It's said that in later Pleistocene about after 70000 years ago, European cave lion's bodysize was smaller and not gigantic expect the South-East European population still retained the gigantic specimen, from then on, more and more gigantic cave lion's population were moved to the East, like some of the huge skull specimens from Ural mountains in Russia, on the other hand, some gigantic cave lion's skulls from North-Eastern Asia like HeiLongJiang province in China may also belonged to the European cave lions which had moved to the East.
*This image is copyright of its original author
@Spalea , is the later Pleistocene cave lion would looks like this? well one of the interesting character is later cave lions would owned the long canines like tiger，their faces also become round and short.
Maybe some faintly stripes would be even more appropriate?
If not studying their genomes, people would have thought they were some kind of close relatives of tiger based on their morphological appearance.
I would say that both Panthera fossilis and Panthera atrox looked more lionish, even the earlier Panthera spelaea specimens would not have been visually mistaken as a tiger-like feline.
About #241: I find your posts exciting (perhaps not the word I would use at first sight, but from the dictionnary it seems to be the good one). I find fascinating to take a space into 4 dimensions (the Earth through the time), to consider which species could be competing at a given time or at least which species could share a given environment at a particular time as you do with, for exemple, the Pleistocene lions with the Amur tigers. To also notice that cave lions could be a ferocious ennemy of the cave bear, or same thing with the American lion towards the grizzly and the short-faced bear. Without forgeting the Pleistocene hyenas and wolves with the lions and tigers. The multiple combinations allow to imagine all kinds of encounter. Really fascinating !
To notice that at a given time the bears were the perfect the top predators (arctodus simus), and after in North America, the grizzly bears after having spent a long difficult period (the Pleistocene) became the top predator of the North America whereas the bears in Siberia are still confronted to the tigers, and so on...
Now, in our present time, numerous animal species have disappeared as well as some (sometimes intense) rivalries. Candidly I am asking to myself if something of the spirit of these ancient rivalries have subsisted till the present days. I remember having read in some of your previous posts how ferocious and intense could be the animosity between the tigers and the bears within some zoos. Much more ferocious, I had this impression, than between the lions and tigers for exemple.
Here it is ! I'm enjoying your posts.
The American lion's major competitors were Smilodon(including Smilodon fatalis and Smilodon populator), dire wolf(Canis dirus) and short-faced bear(Arctodus), grizzly bear(Ursus arctos horribilis), while the Cave lion's major competitors were cave hyena(Crocuta crocta spelaea），Homotheruim, cave bear(Ursus spelaeus) and Eurasian brown bear（Ursus arctos）etc.
Although American lion may not owning the dominant population's number like Eurasian cave lion, it still owning the dominant power in the territory, as a matter of fact, Eurasian cave lion must facing too many competitors and was pressed by hyena groups as usual in late Pleistocene ecosystem, why? because cave lion was not the high-socialized animal like modern lion, that's why when cave lion meeting hyena groups would easily fall into disadvantage. How about the American lion? well the American lion may owned more advantages when facing the competitors, although American lion's population was far less than Smilodon fatalis and dire wolf, however it also means that American lion could more easily avoid the conflict between Smilodon and dire wolf, besides, American lion was larger，based on the supersize, it could more easily to reach the higher class of food chain, as a matter of fact, Smilodon and dire wolf were at the equal class of ecosystem in Ice Age North America, but the American lion was at the higher class and as the dominant predator, it could strongly pressed dire wolf and Smilodon.
The research shows that American lions didn't need to bite bones frequently, as a contrary, Smilodons and dire-wolves had to bite bones frequently because the sharp similar fighting for food.
Just imagine that if these large carnvoires bring back to life in modern earth, we can see what would happen when these powerful beasts face off, how interesting !!!! they will try to become the new kings after nearly 10000 leaving like dinosaurs in Jurassic world !!!
About #261: I' m quite agree with you, thank to wildfact I discover how exciting could be the life of the Pleistocene fauna, particularly in North America, with simus arctodus, grizzly, American lion, sabertooth cats, dire wolves, elephants, american buffalos and so on...
Bring back to life such geant felids like smilodon, lions and tigers ? I don't dare to imagine !
As for the prehistoric lion's look, I imagine it like a maneless lion: straight snout, no relic of stripes... A little few of tuffs of long hairs around the neck...
About #261: I' m quite agree with you, thank to wildfact I discover how exciting could be the life of the Pleistocene fauna, particularly in North America, with simus arctodus, grizzly, American lion, sabertooth cats, dire wolves, elephants, american buffalos and so on...
Bring back to life such geant felids like smilodon, lions and tigers ? I don't dare to imagine !
The North America is the best place to let lost giants bring back to life——“The Pleistocene rewilding ”
(11-04-2018, 11:21 AM)tigerluver Wrote: The MTIII is a difficult one. One issue is that when calculating the range of weights produced by isometry, the range I found was as low as 400 kg to as high a over 500 kg. In other words, the bone is not that well correlated to body size, but is nonetheless from a top 10 Panthera specimen. The second issue is that if P. fossilis is more cursorial, the MTIII would be proportionately elongated and isometrically comparing the bone to that of an extant lion will heavily overestimate the weight. Thus extrapolating other body parts is filled with uncertainty. A skull length range of 450-500 mm would not be illogical in my opinion.
The issue can be applied to the skull. P. spelaea had a big skull for its bones, bigger than the extant lion. For instance, the specimen is Sabol (2018) has a femur to skull ratio of 0.99, which is distinctly less than extant lion generally as the number in P. leo is over 1.00. That means while applying the 484.7 mm skull to P. leo ratios, we'd think the femur would be 500 mm. Likely in reality the femur of the specimen was 470-480 mm, which is not that much bigger than the largest P. spelaea (470 mm femur from Germany mentioned by Deidrich). Of course still absurdly gigantic, but not what P. leo comparisons would lead one to believe. Another confounding issue is that long snouts usually means proportionately longer skulls for a body mass/size. We know that P. fossilis did have a longer snout that P. spelaea, likely making the long bone to skull ratio somewhat lesser in P. fossilis as compared to P. spelaea, further decreasing long bone length extrapolations by a bit. It is for this reason I feel the 465 mm has been underestimated via isometry or the 484.7 mm skull at least overestimated. Unless P. fossilis is exceptionally cursorial, a 465 mm ulna should give a femur of around 480 mm, matching the 484.7 mm skull. Now one can see why mass estimations vary so much, there are too many confounding variables. These two specimens were likely body size-wise just about the same as the 480 mm Ngandong femur for these reasons. Mass is a whole different rabbit hole in its own as the tiger and lion lineages hold mass differently. I have lately avoided addressing the complex topic and just give pure isometry estimates but hopefully this makes sense.
As a whole, the closer the species temporally to an extant species, the more accurate the single bone estimates and vice versa.
As for the rank of the cursoriality for the Pleistocene pantherine cats, it could be something like that?
On this issue, I have my own questions regarding Panthera spelaea.
Diedrich & Rothschild (2012) concluded that the cave lion was most likely a pursuit hunter based on bone exostoses on the brachialis muscle attachment point on two individuals, one from the Eemian and the other Weichselian, out of a considerable sample of bones (NISP=1208, MNI Unknown) indicating the use of the paw-sweep used in running, which apparently supports pursuit hunting, as opposed to extant lions which are ambush hunters:
Quote:Exostoses in Smilodon, H. crenatidens and H. latidens are found in the flexor tendons of the upper limb (Heald, 1989; McCall et al., 2003; Moodie, 1923; Shermis, 1983; Turner, 1997) and have been used as evidence for grappling behavior (Rothschild, 2011). The patterns of exostoses in P. l. spelaea have a different distribution (brachialis muscle, reflecting flexion activities), instead supporting the hypothesis of pursuit behavior. The distribution of exostoses (Fig. 7) and enthesial reaction otherwise identifies P. l. spelaea as a pursuit, rather than ambush predator.
However, Schellhorn (2014) concluded based on ulna dimensions that the cave lion bore adaptations closer to forest cats compared to the extant lion, i.e. seemed to be less cursorial, among other things.
Quote:The included fossil cats Dinofelis piveteaui, P. spelaea, and S. fatalis all distinctly plot within the closed or forest habitat in the scatter plots (Figs. 1b, 2e, f).
In this case the sample size was not impressive, only a single ulna was used in this analysis.
And as has been discussed in the literature before, e.g. Sabol (2018), the cave lion was more robustly built than the African lion, and does indeed share similarities to the tiger in some of its features, including in the limb bones.
By scaling the cats down to the same shoulder height, I compared P. atrox, P. leo, and P. spelaea skeletons to each other (left-right, the cave lion skeleton was digitally modified by a friend from an image from this article https://3dprint.com/216653/reconstructing-cave-lion/)
*This image is copyright of its original author
Looking side-by-side, P. spelaea looks somewhat similar proportionally to P. leo, but it is overall noticeably more robust. I don't know exactly what implications this would have for cursoriality, but intuitively one would think it to be a less cursorial, more ambush-oriented predator.
Indeed, assuming the hypothesis of a derivation from P. fossilis, a shortening of the cave lion's distal limbs can be inferred from @tigerluver's calculations on post #52, as we enter the late Pleistocene, which would suggest a reduction in cursoriality.
A similar situation is seen in the cave lion's main competitor, cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) which also have shortened distal limb elements, relative this time to their extant counterpart, which has also been suggested to indicate a less cursorial mode of hunting, among other things:
Quote:The crural index (tibia length/femur length) in the skeleton of Los Aprendices is 0.74, which is similar to the values of Crocuta spelaea (0.75) and Pachycrocuta brevirostris (0.74) and clearly lower than in extant C. crocuta (0.82) (Palmqvist et al., 2011). The shortening of the tibia of C. spelaea suggests a less cursorial lifestyle. Also, such shortening could provide great power and more stability to dismember and carry large parts of carcasses without dragging (Spoor, 1985; Turner and Antón, 1996; Palmqvist et al., 2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...o_Zaragoza
Of course this could also be an adaptation towards the colder climate, not just in the cave hyena but the coeval cave lion as well, to reduce the size of extremities. Cave paintings have suggested that the cat had smaller ears, an inference supported by the small ears of the cub remains, as well as the shortened tail found at least in infancy, so the scenario where limbs are also shortened does not seem implausible, but apparently this would happen alongside the retention of a cursorial mode of hunting - assuming the hypotheses of a derivation from fossilis AND the inferences of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) are correct.
Some frozen finds, such as the steppe bison blue babe, suggest a similar hunting behaviour to the extant lion, though of course the duration of the chase is hard to infer in such cases:
*This image is copyright of its original author
(Multiple lions hunting Blue Babe is a bit speculative, but that's besides the point here. A great illustration by Anton, regardless).
Unfortunately I can only attach Schellhorn (2014)'s paper because WildFact won't let me attach the Diedrich paper, but I'll make a new post and attach it there.
Any thoughts on the level of cursoriality possessed by the Late Pleistocene cave lion? Particularly in regards to the hypothesis that they were pursuit hunters? The exact answer isn't clear to me, and this is the data that I can find.
Oddly, Panthera leo looks like the one with biggest skull when the shoulder height being equalized.
When it comes to the cursoriality, Panthera spealea spelaea from the late Pleistocene looks like the one with the lowest level, and it also attained a maximum weight of 300-350 kg, very reminiscent to the largest Manchurian tigers in the history. These two felines were also highly convergently evolved.
Panthera spelaea intermedia from the early late Pleistocene was even larger at 400 kg, with a higher level of cursoriality which is considered a more primitive trait and transitional phase closer to Panthera fossilis.
Panthera spelaea spelaea should be considered as the final stabilized form of the Cave lion family, looks like its ultimate goal was to evolve morphologically closer to Panthera tigris.
So what would your thoughts be on the conclusions of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) of the lion being primarily a pursuit hunter?
It depends the chronospecies of the Cave lion, I believe the latest Cave lion was more or less an ambush hunter like the Amur tiger.
I was referring to the latest one, yes, the one which he studied. Based on pathologies he concluded that pursuit predation was their mode of hunting.
I had to check, that what is meant with ambush hunter and pursuit hunter, because I found claim, that cave lion would be pursuit hunter and lion ambush hunter in a way very odd. All big cats still are hunting in very same way. Sneaking close to prey or sometimes waiting that prey comes closer depending on situation. Then making attack and a shorter or longer pursue, but never a very long, up to what cheetah does. About 400 meters. It looks like all these big cats are in pursuit hunter category and none ambush hunter. Even though they hunt also ambushing if opportunity comes.
Then we have ambush hunters like snakes etc. And then persistence hunters like African wild dogs etc. Maybe wolves somewhere in the middle of pursuit hunting and persistence hunting.
But thinking a big cat running long distance, extant or extinct... when even cheetah can´t pursue long distances and we know perfectly well, that lions pursue many times prey some (short) distances. Also tigers do short pursuits when needed and chance to get prey in that way. That research is just telling no-brainer, nothing more or less. Sometimes researchers really are making nice reports about very clear things :) Like I would make a long report how water is wet : My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ; Maybe I missed some point here?
Good point regarding the terminology - I think what Diedrich means is that the cave lion was a persistence hunter, whereas modern lion only give moderately long chases.
Indeed this is what Churchill (2014) interprets it as when citing Rothschild & Diedrich (2012)
Quote:Interestingly, patterns of entheseal reactions on cave lion postcranial remains suggest a greater emphasis on pursuit hunting, suggesting that the Pleistocene lions may have engaged in more chasing of prey and less ambush hunting than do their modern counterparts (Rothschild and Diedrich 2012).
Diedrich contrasts this with apparent ambush hunters such as Smilodon and Homotherium.
As I have written previously, and others have pointed out, the cave lion was rather heavily build, with thicker limbs, and shorter metapodials than the modern lion, which don't seem to lend well to high amounts of cursoriality/ persistence in running.
Then again, they lived in open environments, which might have required a longer chase, but this remains speculative and their body proportions don't seem to indicate such a lifestyle. But then again, there's the pattern of pathologies.
It would be interesting to discuss with Diedrich a little bit, that what kind of pursuits he was thinking about. I am now too lazy to read so closely. If I remember right, that document was wrote in quite... ponderous way. Some scientific documents are well written even though a lot of references to sources, then some are written so, that even irritating to read and figure out what is the point there. Was this document the one with all the time sources and years in the middle of text? That kind of text demands certain kind of mood to read. At least for me :)
But of course environment and type of prey forces predator to adapt to be able to hunt as "demanded". So if environment is pretty open and ambushing is difficult, predator have to be able to chase prey at least some distance. Then again that distance just can´t be too long if predator is heavy. But of course if we look at longest know pursuits of lions and bears for instance, they sometimes show surprising ability to run longer than many would believe if some of those pursuits wouldn´t be filmed.
If and when a bear can run hundreds of meters, why not some big cat... when looking at this video about a lion, not the longest pursuit, but it would be interesting to know the distance. Here this male lion was quite determined to catch this hyena, not giving up like often can be seen with faster prey.
So when male lion as quite heavy and robust animal is able to do this kind of kill, when necessary, for sure it is not unrealistic to think, that pleistocene lions were able to hunt also some distance. I think, that if we talk about persistence hunters we have to rule all big cats out of that category. But if we are thinking, that some big cats mainly attack like ambush hunters only with minimal pursuit or even one leap attacks. Then we have something like modern lion which make ambush attack or pursuit about 20-40 meters and maybe in best case... well let´s say maybe a 100 meters if relatively slow prey. Then cheetah able to go 400 meters. Maybe with pleistocene lions we could be talking about animals able to run somewhere between those distances.
When comparing to other big cats at that time which you mentioned as ambush hunters, then we would of course be talking about a relevant difference making for cave lion possible to hunt in more versatile ways and most probably more different kind of animals as prey. I mean it is of course a big difference if other can run up to 20-40 meters max and other one goes maybe 200 meters with full speed. In more open area that difference for sure can be the difference between success and failure in hunting.
But in that document Diedrich didn´t mention any estimations about distances?
He doesn't elaborate on this at all, bar pathologies being found on the humeri of two individuals on the brachialis attachment point, indicating apparently the forearm sweep associated with pursuit predation, i.e. in running.
In regards to reading comprehension.... English is clearly not Diedrich's first language (well, the fact that he is German is but a few clicks away), but some of his papers are really difficult to follow because of how he's written them.
Hmmmm... not sure about the description of the document, that document you describe is probably Schellhorn 2014, I realized recently from correspondence from @GuateGojira that I didn't turn link sharing on on my Google Drive file.
This is the paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yEYrAZs...Q7Zy0/view
Interesting video, but it is slowed down so the sense of distance may be off by a bit. You make a good point that lions and bears do show considerable endurance, though in the case of the cave lion it was probably a step below the African lion given its build, also apparently its metapodials were rather short and robust compared to the modern lion, as I'll discuss.
No, Diedrich did not elaborate at all on the lion's hutning behaviour, simply that it engaged in pursuit hunting.
On a similar note, Mauricio Anton wrote some short correspondence to a different paper by Diedrich where he discusses a few calculations regarding the cave lion's locomotion based on a trackway in Germany: http://www.academia.edu/16968107/Walking...oichnology
He estimates a fastwalking speed of 2.03-2.3 m/s, similar to the modern lion, at least from the sample it was compared with.
On this issue, I have my own questions regarding Panthera spelaea.
Diedrich & Rothschild (2012) concluded that the cave lion was most likely a pursuit hunter based on bone exostoses on the brachialis muscle attachment point on two individuals, one from the Eemian and the other Weichselian, out of a considerable sample of bones (NISP=1208, MNI Unknown) indicating the use of the paw-sweep used in running, which apparently supports pursuit hunting, as opposed to extant lions which are ambush hunters:
Quote:Exostoses in Smilodon, H. crenatidens and H. latidens are found in the flexor tendons of the upper limb (Heald, 1989; McCall et al., 2003; Moodie, 1923; Shermis, 1983; Turner, 1997) and have been used as evidence for grappling behavior (Rothschild, 2011). The patterns of exostoses in P. l. spelaea have a different distribution (brachialis muscle, reflecting flexion activities), instead supporting the hypothesis of pursuit behavior. The distribution of exostoses (Fig. 7) and enthesial reaction otherwise identifies P. l. spelaea as a pursuit, rather than ambush predator.
However, Schellhorn (2014) concluded based on ulna dimensions that the cave lion bore adaptations closer to forest cats compared to the extant lion, i.e. seemed to be less cursorial, among other things.
Quote:The included fossil cats Dinofelis piveteaui, P. spelaea, and S. fatalis all distinctly plot within the closed or forest habitat in the scatter plots (Figs. 1b, 2e, f).
In this case the sample size was not impressive, only a single ulna was used in this analysis.
And as has been discussed in the literature before, e.g. Sabol (2018), the cave lion was more robustly built than the African lion, and does indeed share similarities to the tiger in some of its features, including in the limb bones.
By scaling the cats down to the same shoulder height, I compared P. atrox, P. leo, and P. spelaea skeletons to each other (left-right, the cave lion skeleton was digitally modified by a friend from an image from this article https://3dprint.com/216653/reconstructing-cave-lion/)
*This image is copyright of its original author
Looking side-by-side, P. spelaea looks somewhat similar proportionally to P. leo, but it is overall noticeably more robust. I don't know exactly what implications this would have for cursoriality, but intuitively one would think it to be a less cursorial, more ambush-oriented predator.
Indeed, assuming the hypothesis of a derivation from P. fossilis, a shortening of the cave lion's distal limbs can be inferred from @tigerluver's calculations on post #52, as we enter the late Pleistocene, which would suggest a reduction in cursoriality.
A similar situation is seen in the cave lion's main competitor, cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) which also have shortened distal limb elements, relative this time to their extant counterpart, which has also been suggested to indicate a less cursorial mode of hunting, among other things:
Quote:The crural index (tibia length/femur length) in the skeleton of Los Aprendices is 0.74, which is similar to the values of Crocuta spelaea (0.75) and Pachycrocuta brevirostris (0.74) and clearly lower than in extant C. crocuta (0.82) (Palmqvist et al., 2011). The shortening of the tibia of C. spelaea suggests a less cursorial lifestyle. Also, such shortening could provide great power and more stability to dismember and carry large parts of carcasses without dragging (Spoor, 1985; Turner and Antón, 1996; Palmqvist et al., 2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...o_Zaragoza
Of course this could also be an adaptation towards the colder climate, not just in the cave hyena but the coeval cave lion as well, to reduce the size of extremities. Cave paintings have suggested that the cat had smaller ears, an inference supported by the small ears of the cub remains, as well as the shortened tail found at least in infancy, so the scenario where limbs are also shortened does not seem implausible, but apparently this would happen alongside the retention of a cursorial mode of hunting - assuming the hypotheses of a derivation from fossilis AND the inferences of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) are correct.
Some frozen finds, such as the steppe bison blue babe, suggest a similar hunting behaviour to the extant lion, though of course the duration of the chase is hard to infer in such cases:
*This image is copyright of its original author
(Multiple lions hunting Blue Babe is a bit speculative, but that's besides the point here. A great illustration by Anton, regardless).
Unfortunately I can only attach Schellhorn (2014)'s paper because WildFact won't let me attach the Diedrich paper, but I'll make a new post and attach it there.
Any thoughts on the level of cursoriality possessed by the Late Pleistocene cave lion? Particularly in regards to the hypothesis that they were pursuit hunters? The exact answer isn't clear to me, and this is the data that I can find.
Oddly, Panthera leo looks like the one with biggest skull when the shoulder height being equalized.
When it comes to the cursoriality, Panthera spealea spelaea from the late Pleistocene looks like the one with the lowest level, and it also attained a maximum weight of 300-350 kg, very reminiscent to the largest Manchurian tigers in the history. These two felines were also highly convergently evolved.
Panthera spelaea intermedia from the early late Pleistocene was even larger at 400 kg, with a higher level of cursoriality which is considered a more primitive trait and transitional phase closer to Panthera fossilis.
Panthera spelaea spelaea should be considered as the final stabilized form of the Cave lion family, looks like its ultimate goal was to evolve morphologically closer to Panthera tigris.
So what would your thoughts be on the conclusions of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) of the lion being primarily a pursuit hunter?
It depends the chronospecies of the Cave lion, I believe the latest Cave lion was more or less an ambush hunter like the Amur tiger.
I was referring to the latest one, yes, the one which he studied. Based on pathologies he concluded that pursuit predation was their mode of hunting.
I had to check, that what is meant with ambush hunter and pursuit hunter, because I found claim, that cave lion would be pursuit hunter and lion ambush hunter in a way very odd. All big cats still are hunting in very same way. Sneaking close to prey or sometimes waiting that prey comes closer depending on situation. Then making attack and a shorter or longer pursue, but never a very long, up to what cheetah does. About 400 meters. It looks like all these big cats are in pursuit hunter category and none ambush hunter. Even though they hunt also ambushing if opportunity comes.
Then we have ambush hunters like snakes etc. And then persistence hunters like African wild dogs etc. Maybe wolves somewhere in the middle of pursuit hunting and persistence hunting.
But thinking a big cat running long distance, extant or extinct... when even cheetah can´t pursue long distances and we know perfectly well, that lions pursue many times prey some (short) distances. Also tigers do short pursuits when needed and chance to get prey in that way. That research is just telling no-brainer, nothing more or less. Sometimes researchers really are making nice reports about very clear things :) Like I would make a long report how water is wet : My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ; Maybe I missed some point here?
Good point regarding the terminology - I think what Diedrich means is that the cave lion was a persistence hunter, whereas modern lion only give moderately long chases.
Indeed this is what Churchill (2014) interprets it as when citing Rothschild & Diedrich (2012)
Quote:Interestingly, patterns of entheseal reactions on cave lion postcranial remains suggest a greater emphasis on pursuit hunting, suggesting that the Pleistocene lions may have engaged in more chasing of prey and less ambush hunting than do their modern counterparts (Rothschild and Diedrich 2012).
Diedrich contrasts this with apparent ambush hunters such as Smilodon and Homotherium.
As I have written previously, and others have pointed out, the cave lion was rather heavily build, with thicker limbs, and shorter metapodials than the modern lion, which don't seem to lend well to high amounts of cursoriality/ persistence in running.
Then again, they lived in open environments, which might have required a longer chase, but this remains speculative and their body proportions don't seem to indicate such a lifestyle. But then again, there's the pattern of pathologies.
It would be interesting to discuss with Diedrich a little bit, that what kind of pursuits he was thinking about. I am now too lazy to read so closely. If I remember right, that document was wrote in quite... ponderous way. Some scientific documents are well written even though a lot of references to sources, then some are written so, that even irritating to read and figure out what is the point there. Was this document the one with all the time sources and years in the middle of text? That kind of text demands certain kind of mood to read. At least for me :)
But of course environment and type of prey forces predator to adapt to be able to hunt as "demanded". So if environment is pretty open and ambushing is difficult, predator have to be able to chase prey at least some distance. Then again that distance just can´t be too long if predator is heavy. But of course if we look at longest know pursuits of lions and bears for instance, they sometimes show surprising ability to run longer than many would believe if some of those pursuits wouldn´t be filmed.
If and when a bear can run hundreds of meters, why not some big cat... when looking at this video about a lion, not the longest pursuit, but it would be interesting to know the distance. Here this male lion was quite determined to catch this hyena, not giving up like often can be seen with faster prey.
So when male lion as quite heavy and robust animal is able to do this kind of kill, when necessary, for sure it is not unrealistic to think, that pleistocene lions were able to hunt also some distance. I think, that if we talk about persistence hunters we have to rule all big cats out of that category. But if we are thinking, that some big cats mainly attack like ambush hunters only with minimal pursuit or even one leap attacks. Then we have something like modern lion which make ambush attack or pursuit about 20-40 meters and maybe in best case... well let´s say maybe a 100 meters if relatively slow prey. Then cheetah able to go 400 meters. Maybe with pleistocene lions we could be talking about animals able to run somewhere between those distances.
When comparing to other big cats at that time which you mentioned as ambush hunters, then we would of course be talking about a relevant difference making for cave lion possible to hunt in more versatile ways and most probably more different kind of animals as prey. I mean it is of course a big difference if other can run up to 20-40 meters max and other one goes maybe 200 meters with full speed. In more open area that difference for sure can be the difference between success and failure in hunting.
But in that document Diedrich didn´t mention any estimations about distances?
He doesn't elaborate on this at all, bar pathologies being found on the humeri of two individuals on the brachialis attachment point, indicating apparently the forearm sweep associated with pursuit predation, i.e. in running.
In regards to reading comprehension.... English is clearly not Diedrich's first language (well, the fact that he is German is but a few clicks away), but some of his papers are really difficult to follow because of how he's written them.
Hmmmm... not sure about the description of the document, that document you describe is probably Schellhorn 2014, I realized recently from correspondence from @GuateGojira that I didn't turn link sharing on on my Google Drive file.
This is the paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yEYrAZs...Q7Zy0/view
Interesting video, but it is slowed down so the sense of distance may be off by a bit. You make a good point that lions and bears do show considerable endurance, though in the case of the cave lion it was probably a step below the African lion given its build, also apparently its metapodials were rather short and robust compared to the modern lion, as I'll discuss.
No, Diedrich did not elaborate at all on the lion's hutning behaviour, simply that it engaged in pursuit hunting.
On a similar note, Mauricio Anton wrote some short correspondence to a different paper by Diedrich where he discusses a few calculations regarding the cave lion's locomotion based on a trackway in Germany: http://www.academia.edu/16968107/Walking...oichnology
He estimates a fastwalking speed of 2.03-2.3 m/s, similar to the modern lion, at least from the sample it was compared with.
Yes, sometimes reports and documents are done in a way, which leaves certain questions without an answer leaving a lot of room for speculation. For instance like in this case. My first comments I wrote because I got the image, that cave lion would have been suggested to be hunting by running relatively long distances compared to lions. Some difference is of course possible, but most probably quite marginal differences.
It would be very good, that when these researchers write these reports, that they would give some even rough estimation about what they think, maybe an example from modern day, like: "Cave lion forearm sweep is indicating to pursuit predation (roughly comparable with modern lion)." That would instantly leave less room for speculation, when someone outside the group of researchers writing that document reads it.
Like this Mauricio Anton seemed to do.
I mean, for instance lions and wolves are both pursuit hunters, at least in some definitions and then some say, that lion is ambush predator. Anyway for a lion 100 meters pursue is a long one, wolf can go 1-2 kilometers. So when saying pursuit hunter, some estimation about distances or rough comparison to some modern day animal would be very clarifying. But hopefully in future Diedrich opens up more what he meant :)
And yes, that video wasn´t the best possible, distance and time of pursue was difficult to estimate. I guess, that it was anything between 50-100 meters. I took it there just to show, that when needed, lion is able to run more than that usual around 20-40 meters. I counted from that video, that lion took around 25-30 leaps at least and if one leap is about 3 meters, that would give 75-90 meters pursue. Impossible to be sure when pursue started while lion wasn´t visible on footage. But not everyday sight to see male lion chasing that long with full speed. There was some determination :) Maybe those leaps were even longer.
(11-05-2018, 11:07 AM)Wolverine Wrote: @tigerluver , @GuateGojira probably you have heard about the famous liger Hercules, having shoulder height "only" 49 inches (125 cm) it weighted 418 kg, we could imagine what will be a weight of liger 135-140 cm tall. According other version this liger was 132 cm tall. Of course Hercules as a domestic animal was a bit overweight.
125 cm is a huge height for any cat, in fact, only the largest Pleistocene "lion" like cats and the Ngandong tiger did reached this height. We can see how large is a cat of that height and weight.
On the other side, I HIGHLY doubt that any cat can/could reach 140 cm in shoulder height. Many ot the estimated sizes in some documents are incorrectly derived. I saw books that quote figures of up to 270 cm in head-body for the giant cave "lions" but at the same time they quote head-body length of 240-250 cm for modern lion and even 280 cm for modern tigers (sic!). Most of the time those papers don't even say how the sizes were derived or if these lengths reflect sizes taken in "straight line" or "along the curves presing the tape".
The biggest Panthera fossilis probably had a height of about 130 cm at the most, with Panthera atrox and Panthera spelaea (largest forms) at about 125 cm and the Ngandong tiger at about 120 cm. Modern tigers and lions average about 1 meter in height and the maximum reliable recorded are about 114 cm. Figures of up to 125 cm for modern lion are a gross exageration and came from incorrect interpretation of the measurements presented by Dr Smuts and his team in his document of 1980.
11-09-2018, 10:32 AM( This post was last modified: 11-09-2018, 10:36 AM by tigerluver )
On shoulder heights, I'd like to add some input based on actual bone data as most sources skip over that. Do not use weights as we can all see mass estimates are clearly unreliable and rather use long bone measurements for body size reconstruction. For the specimens we've recorded, all three giants likely reached around 130 cm. Nonetheless, based on probability it is quite likely there were a good amount of 140 cm P. fossilis we have not yet excavated. It was likely longer legged than modern cats (with distal limb elongation), meaning the largest of the bones are going to produce a very, very tall cat proportionately. One needs to understand that a 465 mm ulna and 192 mm MTIII are truly out of this world, no modern cat compares. Again weight and shoulder height are two different aspects.
The next point would be contrary to the conclusion of @GuateGojira. The largest bones of P. spelaea (470 mm femur, 475 mm skull which would be from a cat with a femur of around 465-470 mm), fall short of the 480 mm P. t. soloensis femur, meaning P. spelaea would likely be shorter. With the greater amount of P. spelaea specimens showing that the species was not really any smaller than P. atrox, P. atrox was likely about the same height as P. spelaea, perhaps somewhat taller for improved cursoriality. On this last point, maybe a chart showing the range of bone sizes of P. atrox and P. spelaea is in order to get P. spelaea its rightful recognition for its massive size.
The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)
My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ;
Maybe I missed some point here?
