The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[tigerluver]

(12-06-2018, 03:49 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote: Just a little query here:

According to some written correspondence by Mauricio Antón and Manuel Salesa, the cave lion had very short distal limb elements and metapodials compared to the African lion. They cite Ballesio (1980), a text which is not accessible to me, to support this claim.

Quote:Here we need to take into account the differences in limb proportions between Pleistocene lions and modern ones: the former are known to have relatively shorter distal segments in their limbs, especially the notoriously short and robust metapodials (Ballesio, 1980).

http://www.academia.edu/16968107/Walking...oichnology

I haven't been able to find any other mention of the cave lion having shorter distal limbs and metapodials than the African lion (though it wouldn't be surprising seeing as the same is seen in the cave hyena as compared to its extant African counterparts), Sabol 2018 doesn't state that the Medvedia lion's metapodials were particulrly short either. Is there any evidence of this being the case?
I know @tigerluver has done some calculations regarding the limb proportions of the European cave lion, maybe that could shed some light on this issue?
From reading that paper you recently linked, it doesn't seem to have had especially distinctive limb proportions, relatively speaking.

I don't think lost in translation would be exactly the right phrase to use, but I believe the issue is caused by the loss of context when describing the bones. Cave lions have "short and stubby" metapodials in the sense that they are very thick for their length so they look "short". The work seems to have missed this contextual point and took the description in a bone to bone context. In proportion to the length of the other long bones, their metapodials are not short in terms of metapodial to long bone length ratios.

Why they have thick metapodials is up in the air. It may be partially to account for their increased robusticity in the rest of their body. Having wide feet would serve as good snow shoes as well. Reply