Panthera leo fossilis

Taxobox
name = Panthera leo fossilis
status = Fossil
fossil_range = Middle Pleistocene
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Mammalia
ordo = Carnivora
familia = Felidae
genus = "Panthera"
species = "P. leo"
subspecies= "P. l. fossilis"
trinomial = "Panthera leo fossilis"
trinomial_authority = (Reichenau, 1906)

"Panthera leo fossilis" is an extinct feline of the Early and Middle Pleistocene. It is generally considered to be an early subspecies of the lion ("Panthera leo").

With a maximum head and body length of 2.40 meters, which is about half a meter longer than today's African lions, "Panthera leo fossilis" was as big as the American lion from the Upper Pleistocene.

Many bone-fragments of this cat are known from Mosbach in Germany, a small village, which is included in the town Wiesbaden today. A nearly complete skull was found at Mauer, near Heidelberg (Germany). In the same sediment as the lion-skull was a 550,000-year-old lower jaw from the early hominid "Homo erectus heidelbergensis". The oldest records of "Panthera leo fossilis" in Europe are from Isernia at Italy and are about 700,000 years old. A 1.75 million- year-old lion-jaw from Olduvai in Kenya shows a striking similarity to those of Europe.

From "Panthera leo fossilis" derived the Upper Pleistocene European cave lion ("Panthera leo spelaea"), which is recorded for the first time about 300,000 years ago.

Literature

* Ernst Probst: "Deutschland in der Urzeit". Orbis Verlag, 1999. ISBN 3-572-01057-8
* J. Burger: "Molecular phylogeny of the extinct cave lion Panthera leo spelea", 2003. [http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Biologie/Anthropologie/Burger_Cave_Lion.pdf Molecular phylogeny of cave lion ] .

External links

* [http://www.worldmuseumofman.org/cavelion.htm Genuine European Cave Lion Skull]
* [http://natur-news.blog.de/?tag=Panthera%20leo%20fossilis Natur News]