Friday My Cat Is Bigger-Blogging
During the late Pleistocene, lions were the most widely distributed land-mammals on earth except for man. They ranged from their present sub-Saharan homeland throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, North America and eventually South America as far as Peru.
Over half a million years ago, lions (Panthera leo) separated into two groups that subsequently had little interaction or genetic exchange. The cave lion group (Panthera leo fossilis-spelaea) entered Europe and Northern Asia and apparently remained geographically (and later perhaps behaviorally) isolated from African and Southern Asian populations. The blood of those southern animals still flows in the present-day lions of sub-Saharan Africa (P. leo subgroup – senegalensis) and a few surviving individuals (P. leo persica) in the Gir Forest of India.
American Lions (P. leo atrox) were descendents of the cave lion group. They entered North America crossing the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia) during an early series of glacial advances in the Pleistocene (Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age – chart to come I promise). Like their early Eurasian cousins they were some of the largest cats to have ever lived. Males, like the animal shown here were a full 25% larger than the biggest of today’s lions. Where a big, wild male today might weigh 450 pounds, a live weight of 600 pounds or more was possible for atrox. And they had to be big and powerful. From (rather famous) remains in Alaska, we know they preyed on enormous Ice Age bison.
An unusual feature of American Lions is that they had larger brains, relative to body size, than lions anywhere else. I’m not sure just what that might indicate behaviorally, but it’s an interesting aspect of what must have been a truly awesome cat.
European cave lions have been depicted by our ancestors both in pigment and as carvings. Interestingly, no long-maned males were portrayed. There are however, marks on one of the carvings that might indicate somewhat longer hair on the neck and shoulders, and one cave painting I remember showed longer chest and belly hair. I based the mane of our animal here on those representations.
Within the genus Panthera the splits into species seem counter-intuitive to me. Apparently, new genetic work has estimated that tigers split off first about 2 million years ago, followed by the jaguar. I would have thought just looking at them and from the fact that they can still produce offspring (sometimes viable – sometimes sterile), that lion/tiger was the latest speciation. But it appears, that the leopard/lion divergence was the last, some 1.25 to 1.5 million years ago.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Now that’s cat blogging!
December 16th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
That’s one cool cat daddio!
December 16th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Beautiful. I love the combination of education and eye candy. Thank you for this blog.
December 17th, 2005 at 12:05 am
What Zetetic said. Always something exciting to look at and something I didn’t know before. I like the way your mind works.
December 17th, 2005 at 2:09 am
Yep. If I could draw that well, I’m sure my blog would be popular too.
December 17th, 2005 at 6:09 am
Wish I could see these amazing cats today. Your art is the next best thing. Thanks for such stunning, informative work.
December 17th, 2005 at 6:26 am
The well-attested size of ligers is pretty indicative of a significant gene gap between lions and tigers. That is, the combination of the genomes in the developmental environment of the womb of one of them produces an effect not found in the pure genome of either.
Leopard/lion crosses also exist.
Interbreedability seems very complex. Crossbreed sterility is determined largely (I gather) by number and shape of chromosomes. Mules are sterile because a common mode of speciation in equines is chromosome-number change. Similarly, development is so insanely complex that it doesn’t take much in the way of tweaking the regulatory genes to screw up crossbreeding (either viability or sterility).
But if speciation occurs because of geographical/ecological dispersion, you don’t necessarily have to end up with a lot of difference in the genome. That is, lions and tigers probably separated mostly because one went toward sociality and pursuit predation and open terrain and the other tended toward asociality and ambush predation and forests; tack on some sexual selection to get manes and stripes. There’s not a lot of genetic pressure to push them farther apart than that, only drift. Since they’re comparable in size and both still hypercarnivorous, with similar methods of killing similar prey, their regulatory/developmental genetic apparatus haven’t experienced pressure to diverge and have remained fairly compatible.
Leopards and lions similarly, except that I’d predict that the size difference more than compensates for the smaller separation time in terms of genetic compatibility.
December 17th, 2005 at 7:00 am
Greg: thanks for the input. I know ligers are larger than either of their parents while tilons are smaller. Both male tigers and female lions contribute genes that limit growth while those genes are absent from male lion/female tiger crosses. It should of course be noted that all ligers and tilons and lion/leopard crosses are the product of captive breeding. Wild populations breed true at the genetic (and behavioral) distances seen in modern Panthera species. The liger-like size of American lions and their earlier Euopean P. leo spelaea cousins is the product of selective pressure for dealing with the Pleistocene environment and relatively larger Ice Age herbivores.
December 17th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Speaking of cat blogging, head on over to (http://www.isfullofcrap.com) This Blog is Full of Crap and look for the Carnival of the Cats link at the top. That will lead you to the Carnival of the Cats information page, including a link to this week’s host. The CotC is about house cats, but I think a post on extinct great cats qualifies.
December 17th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Another fantastic, well-written post, Carl. Thanks!
December 18th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
Wow. They are beautiful, aren’t they?
To think that they lived so recently, too. Humans cohabited with them. Competed with them for prey. Were prey to them. Probably even killed some of them.
I find it sad that so much of the Pleistocene mega fauna is gone. I just hope we don’t lose what remains. One of the saddest things I ever saw was a Lion in a zoo in India. It sat there, roaring incessantly, in a cage barely larger than itself.
But they are amazing creatures.
That’s interesting that the American Lions had a larger brain/body mass ratio than extant forms. It would have been amazing for us to have a chance to study them in greater depth than the fossil record allows.
December 19th, 2005 at 2:04 am
Thank you for this absolutely brilliant website.
I’m really enjoying reading and looking at the pictures.
It brightens my day.
December 19th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Hi Carl, I remember reading a while back that there was once an extreme reduction in the leopard’s gene pool and so we’re talking a tiny tiny ancestral population. And the thing with population sizes is that of course changes can spread much quicker through a smaller population. This could be one reason for the more obvious differences between lion-leopards as oppoesed to lion-tiger.
And again, beautiful pictures and a fascinating history! Thank you
December 22nd, 2005 at 4:50 am
Elissa: I read the same thing and I think you’re idea is right on. It seems to have happened much more recently to cheetah also. Even our own line seems to have had a couple of close calls.
Rob: I remember the Mandrill ( the large baboon with the multi-colored face and butt) at the Oakland zoo back in the late 1970s. Here you had an animal that was nothing if not a visual display piece, and no females to display for. He was a wreak just sitting in the corner of a rather small cage wringing his hands. A couple years later I steeled myself to go back and they had brought in two females. What a difference. I didn’t think at first that it was the same animal; strutting around like the only rooster in the hen coup. All three seemed content. Zoos have made tremendous strides over the course of my lifetime, but there’s still a ways to go in many areas.
December 22nd, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Might I notice: cave lions had no tail tuft and had characteristic “beard”, longer tuft of hair on lower jaw. It is well visible on some cave paintings, which are actually detailed picture studies almost good enough to copy into modern realistic painting. I’m unsure about weak stripes - some cave drawings suggest it, others don’t. I would also add more muscular front legs and shoulders, and bigger flat feet - this is visible difference between wild and zoo big cats.
Artistic license is your thing, I would imagine cave lion as frosty grey, with smaller ears and eyes emhasising bulk of this beast.
Overall, great pictures, maybe outline of objects is a little too visible for painting with photo-realistic background.
Still admire girl and monster pic - did you think about branching out to sci-fi illustration?
December 23rd, 2005 at 2:02 am
I love that you actually studied cave paintings/carvings for physiological clues, Carl…and I continue to be impressed by your wealth of knowledge. Is it all on hand - or rather, in head - or do you also maintain some sort of filing system?
December 23rd, 2005 at 11:48 am
Jurek: The animal I portrayed is the North American Panthera leo atrox and not the European cave lion Panthera leo spelaea. These animals ranged much farther south in NA than their cousins did in Europe. As far as the cave representations go, they were very good, but as with most primitive art, they tended to emphasize things the way a caricaturist might exaggerate the features of a human face. Suggest yes, but tightly base a rendering on…(?)
January 1st, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Lions, tigers and bears all have their outsized fossil records because plenty of megafaunas in Pleistocene era have supported the food supplies of these mega large predators.
January 19th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
I’m happy I’ve found this blog.
But one question: lions and *jaguars* (ranging from South America up to Florida, at least recently), at least split later than lions and tigers, or lions and *african* leopards??
Anyway, if that’s correct, then when when did leopards split? Yet later than lions and tigers?
I’ve been having some weird ideas about speciation some time ago, in which the more recent split between leopards and lions wouldn’t look weird; but I wasn’t expecting that. But I guess that it works more or less the same way with jaguars, just remembering that lions once were in America too…
February 13th, 2006 at 12:16 am
El león americano es un 25% más grande que un león actual (panthera leo massaicus), estamos hablando de aproximadamente 310 kilos.
Un peso similar a los más grandes tigres siberianos.
Daniel:
Los tigres datan de unos 2 millones de años, por otra parte los leones aparecieron hace unos 1,6 millones de años.
April 1st, 2006 at 2:01 am
The lion is very beautiful. And il like american lion.
This giant species of lion hunt Bison (priscus, antiquus), juvenil Mammoth (Mammuthus) and ancient elk (Cervidae =} Cervus elaphus canadensis).
Sorry for orthograph, I’m not say very spike english because I’m french.
April 6th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Wow! You should draw an American Lion attacking an Ice Age Bison!!!!
February 7th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Oh my God.
Lovely!
So glad I found this Blog.
Your American Lion is gorgeous.
The brain size thing is intruiging. Would love to have been able to see them alive and in action (albeit not as a meal)!
Have you ever though about portraying a Thylacoleo Carnifex or Thylacosmilus?
March 25th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I don’t mean to flood your posts with comments but i wish i could comment them all, this time I’ve got a question about your choice for the mane of p. leo atrox. You’ve chosen to put quite a thick mane around It’s neck (even though its still thinner than the African lion mane). My question is why did you choose to give it a “Mane” in the first place? I’ve seen a picture of a cave lion that you rendered leaping in the air (I think it was you who made it). The picture of the cave lion showed a ruff of hair on the neck and belly, but it was definitely not a mane like the illustration of the atrox lion shown here. If the species of lion diverged into the two subgroups of African/South Eurasian and North Eurasian/North American types… than shouldn’t there be some consistency about their appearances? IE — mane-less Northern-group lions, and maned Southern-group lions. There are of course many many more factors that would determine if a lion might or might not have had a mane (and i know that evolution and adaptation don’t have to be consistent) but I’m sure you’ve already thought about all of this, so i really just want to know why you chose to make it slightly closer in appearance to an African lion, than to your illustration of a European lion.
December 16th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
You mention the possible short manes of American lions, but I also heard some cave paintings have shown stripes (or perhaps that was the cave lion?), is this true? Oh, and how tall did American lions get? Weren’t they like as tall as people (tall enough to look an adult human in the eyes)?