American lion

Not to be confused with the cougar, sometimes also referred to as "American lion".
This article is about the feline. For the biography, see American Lion (book). For the racehorse, see American Lion (horse).

American lion
Temporal range: Late Pleistocene 130,000-12,800 years ago
Skeleton from the La Brea tar pits at the George C. Page Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Pantherinae
Genus: Panthera
Species:
†P. atrox
Binomial name
†Panthera atrox
(Leidy, 1853)[1]
The maximal range of lions - red indicates Panthera spelaea, blue Panthera atrox, and green Panthera leo.
Synonyms
  • Felis imperialis Leidy, 1878
  • Iemish listai? Roth, 1899
  • Felis atrox bebbi Merriam, 1909
  • Felis atrox "alaskensis" Scott, 1930
  • Felis onca mesembrina? Cabrera, 1934
  • Panthera onca mesembrina? (Cabrera, 1934)

The American lion (Panthera atrox (/ˈpænθərə ˈætrɒks/), with the species name meaning "savage" or "cruel", also called the North American lion) is an extinct pantherine cat native to North America during the Late Pleistocene from around 130,000 to 12,800 years ago.[2][3][4][5] Genetic evidence suggests that its closest living relative is the lion (Panthera leo), with the American lion representing an offshoot from the lineage of the largely Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea), from which it is suggested to have split around 165,000 years ago. Its fossils have been found across North America, from Canada to Mexico.[6][7] It was about 25% larger than the modern lion, making it one of the largest known felids to ever exist, and an important apex predator.[8]

The American lion became extinct as part of the end-Pleistocene extinction event along with most other large animals across the Americas. The extinctions followed human arrival in the Americas. Proposed factors in its extinction include climatic change reducing viable habitat,[9] as well as human hunting of herbivore prey causing a trophic cascade.[10]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference leidy1853 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Harington, C. R. (1969). "Pleistocene remains of the lion-like cat (Panthera atrox) from the Yukon Territory and northern Alaska". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 6 (5): 1277–1288. Bibcode:1969CaJES...6.1277H. doi:10.1139/e69-127.
  3. ^ Christiansen, P.; Harris, J. M. (2009). "Craniomandibular morphology and phylogenetic affinities of Panthera atrox: implications for the evolution and paleobiology of the lion lineage". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (3): 934–945. Bibcode:2009JVPal..29..934C. doi:10.1671/039.029.0314. S2CID 85975640.
  4. ^ Barnett, R.; Mendoza, M. L. Z.; Soares, A. E. R.; Ho, S. Y. W.; Zazula, G.; Yamaguchi, N.; Shapiro, B.; Kirillova, I. V.; Larson, G.; Gilbert, M. T. P. (2016). "Mitogenomics of the Extinct Cave Lion, Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810), Resolve its Position within the Panthera Cats". Open Quaternary. 2: 4. doi:10.5334/oq.24. hdl:10576/22920.
  5. ^ Stuart, Anthony J.; Lister, Adrian M. (April 2010). "Extinction chronology of the cave lion Panthera spelaea". Quaternary Science Reviews. 30 (17–18): 2329–2340. Bibcode:2011QSRv...30.2329S. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.04.023.
  6. ^ Harington, C. R. (1971). "A Pleistocene Lion-like Cat ( Panthera atrox ) from Alberta". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 8 (1): 170–174. Bibcode:1971CaJES...8..170H. doi:10.1139/e71-014.
  7. ^ Montellano-Ballesteros, M.; Carbot-Chanona, G. (2009). "Panthera leo atrox (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) in Chiapas, Mexico". The Southwestern Naturalist. 54 (2): 217–223. doi:10.1894/CLG-20.1. S2CID 85346247.
  8. ^ Deméré, Tom. "SDNHM Fossil Field Guide: Panthera atrox". Archived from the original on 2009-06-25. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
  9. ^ Arias-Alzate, Andrés; González-Maya, José F.; Arroyo-Cabrales, Joaquín; Martínez-Meyer, Enrique (December 2017). "Wild Felid Range Shift Due to Climatic Constraints in the Americas: a Bottleneck Explanation for Extinct Felids?". Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 24 (4): 427–438. doi:10.1007/s10914-016-9350-0. ISSN 1064-7554.
  10. ^ Ripple, William J.; Van Valkenburgh, Blaire (2010-08-01). "Linking Top-down Forces to the Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions". BioScience. 60 (7): 516–526. doi:10.1525/bio.2010.60.7.7. ISSN 1525-3244.