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'Battles beyond Epochs' 1 (Superlative Cats)

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In this original new series, I'll feature animals from totally different temporal ranges and locations, in order to present prehistoric dream match-ups that are held beyond space and time.

This is the first episode of the series and featured beasts are some of the largest, most formidable species of the family Felidae(cats).

Top:

Panthera spelaea fossilis
[the middle Pleistocene Europe]

The cave lion(Panthera spelaea) has long been thought of as an extinct northern sub-speceis of Panthera leo, the modern lion. Recently, Barnett et al.,(2016) suceeded in sequencing mt.DNA abstracted from Beringian cave lion materials and their genetic analysis reveals that Panthera spelaea branched off of the common ancestor of lion relatives around 1.89 million years ago(the early Pleistocene), considerably older than previously believed. These data support the recognition of the cave lion as a fully distinct species, rather than sub-species of the lion(but these lion relatives were still more closely related to each other than to other pantherine cats, I believe).

It is thus revealed that the middle Pleistocene ancient cave lion known as Panthera fossilis, sometimes dubbed as the Mosbach cave lion or ancestral cave lion, appeared later than the split and must be already on the P. spelaea lineage('Panthera spelaea fossilis').
Panthera spelaea fossilis was one of the largest felid species ever existed, rivaling the bodily dimensions of the late Pleistocene gaint Panthera atrox.


Bottom, from left to right:

Machairodus(Amphimachairodus) horribilis
[the late Miocene north western China]

The late Miocene Machairodus(Amphimachairodus) horribilis was one of the largest machairodontines(saber toothed cat relatives) known to date, along with the famous Smilodon populator of the late Pleistocene. A large skull of M. horribilis has recently been unearthed in north western China which measures over 415 mm, even though a part of its saggital crest is missing(Deng et al., 2016). The genus Machairodus was a very large ancestral scimitar toothed cat whose body proportion rather more resembled that of pantherine cats than that of other machairodontines, with raletively long back, hind limbs and tail. The fore quarters were generally more burly and stronger than in other scimitar toothed cats(homotherines) such as Homotherium or Lokotunjailurus.

According to Deng et al.(2016), M. horribilis had smaller mandibular gape angle than in Smilodon and therefore could only apply the canine shear bites to the neck of relatively small prey, leading to the assumption that the average prey size was lesser than in Smilodon. However, as can be seen in this restoration, Machairodus' scimitar tooths were considerably shorter than the sabers of Smilodon and I guess probably wouldn't have needed an equally wide gape for big game hunting! Besides, homotherines generally had structually sturdier canines and therefore, their biting strategy may not have been restricted only to shearing bites to the throat area(see the study on 'the cookie cutter bite' suggested for another homotherine cat, Xenosmilus hodsonae).


Smilodon populator
[the late Pleistocene Argentina]

Smilodon populator
was the largest species of the genus Smilodon, with large specimens would have approached over 400 kgs in body mass, and universally acknowledged as the most powerful felid ever appeared.
S. populator is renowned for its immensly strong body build, probably the most robust of all cats, both ultimately and also proportionally (its humero-radial ratio was smaller even than in other Smilodon species, which implies that S. populator had proportionally shorter, significantly thicker distal limb structures), and for the hypertrophied upper canines, 28 cm in total length!


I'll continue presenting spectacular intra or inter specific prehistoric match ups.

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I'm more interested in seeing M. horridus deal with Dinocrocuta gigantea as both lived 8 MYA....