Research overview: lion dispersal across the Old and New Worlds

This overview examines the remarkable dispersal history of the lion lineage, which spread from an African and Eurasian heartland across the Northern Hemisphere during the Pleistocene. Cave lions, Panthera spelaea, ranged across Eurasia and into Beringia, while their relatives crossed farther into North America to give rise to the American lion, Panthera atrox, south of the ice sheets. The survey reviews how fossils and ancient DNA together trace these movements, the relationships among African, cave, and American lions, and the geographic and climatic factors that channelled lion expansion. It discusses how the lion became one of the most widely distributed large mammals of the Ice Age, and how reconstructing its dispersal clarifies the origins of the great extinct lions and their ties to surviving populations.