The South-Chinese Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis)

[GuateGojira]

On the skull of the South China tiger:

I found this quote interesting: 
“The South China tiger is believed to have a more archaic skull, whose ratio of the length and width is relatively larger than other tiger subspecies. Its body is slim with a slender waist. It is distinguishable from other tiger subspecies by its narrower face, longer nose, more intense orange color, short fur, longer legs, and shorter & broader stripes which are spaced far apart compared with those of Bengal and Siberian tigers.”
 
Source: http//english.savechinastigers.org/node/31
 
Obviously, I searched in my database and this is what I found:
 
Subspecies               Ratio GSL-ZW               Sample
P. t. amoyensis         1.47                            6
P. t. corbetti                1.46                            3
P. t. sondaica              1.43                            13
P. t. altaica                 1.44                            13
P. t. tigris                    1.41                            18
 
Incredibly as it is, it seems that this is correct, as the largest ratio came from the South China tigers (1.47). This means that the South China tigers had a narrow skulls in comparison with the other “modern” subspecies. The second narrower group is that of Indochinese tigers, but with such a small sample (3) it is too early to achieve any final conclusion.
 
It seems that the first tigers had narrow skulls, a trait that probably presented also the Wanhsien tiger and is now show in P. t. amoyensis. The second tiger group in evolve is that of Indochina, with also narrow skulls. The later mainland groups have much wider skulls with P. t. tigris presenting the smallest ratio.
 
Sunda tigers seems that had changed very much trough they evolution. The Ngandong tiger had a ratio of 1.62, very narrow for any modern tiger, but latter Javanese forms seems to had increased they skull wide and carnassials’ size, but also developed smaller sagital crest and narrow occipital areas. It is obvious that Sunda tigers had different masticator systems in comparison with mainland populations. Reply