American lion
| American lion | ||||||||||||
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Skeleton from the La Brea Tar Pits |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Pleistocene | ||||||||||||
| approx. 200,000 to 12,000 years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Panthera atrox | ||||||||||||
| Leidy , 1853 | ||||||||||||
The American lion ( Panthera atrox , often also called the lion's subspecies Panthera leo atrox ) is an extinct big cat species from the Upper Pleistocene of America. It probably developed from the Eurasian cave lion after it had crossed the Bering Bridge from Asia during the Ice Age .
Appearance and characteristics
The American lion, together with the Mosbach lion ( Panthera leo fossilis ), was one of the largest relatives of the lion ( Panthera leo ) and exceeded today's representatives of the species by about 25% in body length. The animals, which are estimated to be up to 2.5 m (without tail) long, exceeded the dimensions of a Siberian tiger , which in exceptional cases can reach a head-trunk length of up to about 2.3 m.
The American lion, like today's lions, probably had a single-colored coat. It is not known whether the males of this species had as stately mane as most of today's lions, because cave paintings showing the closely related Eurasian cave lions always show lions without a mane. It is possible that these were females, but it is more likely that male cave lions had no or poor manes. It is unclear whether this can also be assumed for the American lion.
Geographical and temporal distribution
Panthera atrox was not only common in North America, but also in the northern parts of South America. His remains have been found from Canada in the north to Peru in the south. Instead, the Eurasian cave lion was common in Alaska . A large number of American lion fossils have been found in the famous tar pits near Los Angeles ( Rancho La Brea ).
At the end of the Pleistocene, the American lion became extinct in the course of a Quaternary extinction along with a number of other large animal species in America, with the most recent verified evidence coming from Edmonton (11,400 14 C years BP ) and Idaho (11,900 14 C years BP ).
Food and enemies
Many animal species lived in the time of the American lion that are now extinct. In his time, he found a much wider range of prey than would be the case in America today. Adult woolly mammoths ( Mammuthus primigenius ), American mastodons and prairie mammoths ( Mammuthus colombi ) were certainly too big as potential prey animals. Their calves may very well have fallen victim to him on occasion. The species that are potential main prey animals include bison and deer , which still live in North America today, especially the extinct horses ( Equus ), western camels ( Camelops hesternus ) and bush ox ( Euceratherium ). There is clear evidence of his ability to hunt large wild cattle: Blue Babe , the 35,000-year-old mummy of a steppe bison ( Bos priscus ), found in Alaska, north of Fairbanks in 1979, had a piece of a lion's tooth stuck in it. In addition, there were scratches on the animal's skin that could only have come from a large cat. The imprints of the typical killing bite that big cats often use on large prey were discovered on the mouth .
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In the Ice Age, there were other large, now extinct, predators in America in addition to the American lion. These animals were in part a competition even for the great American lion. He had to defend his prey against saber-toothed cats , giant short- snouted bears ( Arctodos simus ) and cold-age wild dogs ( Canis dirus ), close relatives of today's wolf . This is why it is believed that the American lion, like lions today, lived in packs . The discoveries made at La Brea in Los Angeles speak against this view . On the basis of the fossils, a balanced gender ratio can be demonstrated, as it does not occur with the recent pack lions.
Isotope analyzes of strontium from the teeth of the American lion suggest that the big cat was relatively local. The isotope values of the teeth, recovered in Cedral in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosí , largely matched those from the soil and local plants. Today's lions maintain territories from 20 to over 700 km² and migrate a maximum of 343 km for males and 128 km for females. The average values are respectively 117 and 50 km. After further analysis, the strontium values do not change until around 150 km from Cedral. Possibly this was the maximum distance that animals from the region covered. Evaluations of carbon isotope analyzes suggest a local preference for bison, horses and mammoths. In addition, the animals stayed in lightly forested areas.
Systematics
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Systematics of the big cats according to Tseng et al. 2013
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The American lion probably evolved from the Eurasian cave lion after it crossed the Bering Bridge from Asia during the Ice Age . Both are probably closely related species of the recently living lion and the leopard ( P. pardus ). This close relationship, but also the independent systematic position within the lion systematics, was confirmed by genetic analyzes of fossil DNA. American lions and Eurasian lions therefore form two relatively closely related forms within a clearly distinguishable group that is opposite to all lions of today. The Beringian lions that lived in the submerged land between northwest North America and eastern Siberia are genetically identical to the Eurasian cave lions and differ from American lions. This separation apparently took place during the penultimate glacial period about 200,000 years ago, when a huge ice sheet separated the steppes of Beringia from the habitats of southern North America. The genetic exchange between the Alaskan cave lions and the American lions further south was low even during the last warm period when this ice sheet disappeared.
Studies of the skull morphology, on the other hand, place the American lion as an independent species in the closer relationship of the jaguar ( Panthera onca ), which is the only big cat species to live on the American double continent today. According to these investigations, the jaw mechanics of the American lion corresponds to that of the jaguar and the tiger , but differs significantly from that of the Eurasian cave lions and lions living today. The authors of this study assume a common ancestor of the jaguar and the American cave lion similar to the Eurasian jaguar ( Panthera gombaszoegensis ), which developed separately from the lions and colonized North America, where it separated into the two species.
The independent species as well as the close relationship to the lion and leopard was also confirmed by phylogenetic studies in the context of the first description of the Panthera zdanskyi 2011 and the Panthera blytheae 2013, both systematics differ primarily with regard to the position of the tiger and the fossil species Panthera palaeosinensis on the Basis of the family tree, but agree with regard to the independence of the American lion and the cave lion.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b “Panthera leo” (On-line) In: Digital Morphology, May 12, 2006
- ^ Paul S. Martin: Quaternary Extinctions . The University of Arizona Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8165-1100-4
- ↑ a b R. Barnett, B. Shapiro, I. Barnes, SY Ho, J. Burger, N. Yamaguchi, TF Higham , HT Wheeler, W. Rosendahl, AV Sher, M. Sotnikova, T. Kuznetsova, GF Baryshnikov, LD Martin, CR Harington, JA Burns, A. Cooper: Phylogeography of lions (Panthera leo ssp.) Reveals three distinct taxa and a late Pleistocene reduction in genetic diversity. In: Molecular ecology. Volume 18, Number 8, April 2009, ISSN 1365-294X , pp. 1668-1677, doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-294X.2009.04134.x , PMID 19302360 .
- ↑ Victor Adrián Pérez-Crespo, Peter Schaaf, Gabriela Solís-Pichardo, Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales and José Ramón Torres-Hernández: Investigation of the mobility of American lion (Panthera atrox) from México (Cedra, San Luis Petosí) using Sr isotopes. In: New Yearbook of Geology and Paleontology Treatises. 291 (3), 2019, pp. 351-357.
- ^ A b Z. Jack Tseng, Xiaoming Wang, Graham J. Slater, Gary T. Takeuchi, Qiang Li, Juan Liu, Guangpu Xie: Himalayan fossils of the oldest known pantherine establish ancient origin of big cats. Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences vol. 281 no. 1774 20132686, November 2013. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2013.2686
- ↑ Per Christiansen, John M. Harris: Craniomandibular Morphology and Phylogenetic Affinities of Panthera atrox: Implications for the Evolution and Paleobiology of the Lion Lineage. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29 (3), 2009; Pp. 934-945. doi : 10.1671 / 039.029.0314
- ^ Ji H. Mazák, Per Christiansen and Andrew C. Kitchener: Oldest Known Pantherine Skull and Evolution of the Tiger . In: PLoS ONE . 6, No. 10, 2011, p. E25483. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0025483 .
literature
- Alan Turner: The big cats and their fossil relatives. Columbia University Press, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-231-10229-1 .
- Barry Cox: Dinosaurs and Other Animals of Ancient Times. The great encyclopedia of prehistoric wildlife. Gondrom, Bindlach 1989, ISBN 3-8112-1138-2 .
- Miles Barton: Wild America. Witnesses to the Ice Age. Vgs, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8025-1558-7 .
Web links
- Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center - American lion , website of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center at archives.org (April 16, 2008)