🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study used ancient and modern DNA to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships and population history of lions, including the extinct American lion and Eurasian cave lion. The genetic data resol…

Ross Barnett, Beth Shapiro, Ian Barnes, Simon Y. W. Ho, Joachim Burger, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, et al. · Molecular Ecology · 2009

This overview surveys the taxonomy of the Eurasian cave lion and its immediate ancestors. The classic Late Pleistocene cave lion is usually called Panthera spelaea, while larger, earlier Middle Pleist…

This overview surveys the disappearance of numerous large cats, including Smilodon, Homotherium, the American lion, the cave lion, and Miracinonyx, as part of the broader late Quaternary megafaunal ex…

This overview examines how body size influenced which carnivores survived the end-Pleistocene extinctions and which, like the great cats, did not. Large predators tend to have smaller populations, low…

This overview surveys what skeletal evidence reveals about the body size of the cave lion and the degree of size difference between the sexes. Panthera spelaea was a large cat, generally exceeding the…

This overview surveys efforts to reconstruct the coat colour and appearance of the cave lion using frozen cubs and ancient DNA. The preserved fur of permafrost specimens provides direct evidence of pe…

This overview examines studies of genetic diversity and population structure within the cave lion, based on ancient DNA from specimens spanning the species' range and time depth. Such analyses have re…

This overview examines depictions of cave lions in Upper Paleolithic art, most famously the powerful panel of lions at Chauvet Cave in France, along with engravings and figurines from across Ice Age E…

This overview examines genetic and fossil evidence bearing on when the cave lion lineage split from the ancestors of modern lions. Ancient DNA studies estimate that Panthera spelaea diverged from the…

This overview surveys the distribution of the American lion across Pleistocene North America, where its fossils are known largely from areas south of the great continental ice sheets, extending into p…

This overview surveys stable isotope studies of cave lion diet, which use carbon and nitrogen values in bone collagen to identify the prey of Panthera spelaea across Ice Age Eurasia and Beringia. Seve…

This overview examines the possible ecological connection between the cave lion and the cave bear, two emblematic Ice Age mammals whose extinctions both fall in the latest Pleistocene. Isotopic and co…

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, Pant…

This overview focuses on what Paleolithic depictions and frozen specimens suggest about whether male cave lions had manes and how the animals behaved socially. Cave art rarely shows the prominent mane…

This overview surveys the recovery and analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes from cave lion fossils, which have helped pin down the position of Panthera spelaea within the lion radiation. Mitogen…

This overview surveys the science of permafrost-preserved cave lion remains, an exceptional class of fossils in which freezing has retained skin, fur, muscle, and other soft tissues for tens of thousa…

This overview examines how radiocarbon dating is applied to the bones of late Pleistocene cats to reconstruct their chronologies and last appearances. Directly dating individual fossils of Smilodon, c…

This overview examines how researchers reconstruct the hunting behaviour of the cave lion from anatomy, isotopes, prey associations, and prehistoric art. Skeletal proportions indicate a powerful ambus…

This overview surveys efforts to reconstruct how Panthera atrox looked, including the contentious question of whether males bore a mane like modern African lions. Because the American lion descends fr…

This overview surveys the stable isotope techniques used to reconstruct the diets of extinct cats. Carbon isotopes in bone and tooth collagen and enamel record whether prey fed on plants using differe…

This overview examines the central role of the Bering land bridge in the history of cats, serving as a recurrent corridor for felid movement between Asia and North America. The survey reviews how lowe…

This overview describes a pair of cave lion cubs, often referred to as Uyan and Dina, recovered from Siberian permafrost and among the first such mummified Panthera spelaea young to attract wide scien…

This overview examines the vast geographic range of the cave lion, which spread across northern Eurasia and into Beringia and parts of northwestern North America during the Pleistocene. This enormous…

This overview describes two remarkably preserved cave lion cubs, nicknamed Sparta and Boris, recovered from the permafrost of Yakutia in northeastern Siberia. Frozen for tens of thousands of years, th…

This overview reviews evidence on when and why the cave lion disappeared, with the latest well-dated records indicating survival into the terminal Pleistocene before extinction roughly fourteen thousa…

This study generated genome-scale data from ancient and modern lions, including the extinct cave lion, to reconstruct the deep evolutionary history of the lion lineage. The analyses confirmed that the…

Marc de Manuel, Ross Barnett, Marcela Sandoval-Velasco, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020