IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Hemmer, H. | |
| The Story of the cave lion | |
| 2011 Quaternaire (4): 201-208 | |
The first part of this review deals with the research history of the cave lion. The first mention of a Late Pleistocene specimen of _Panthera leo spelaea _(Goldfuss, 1810) dates from 1774. The leonine nature of this large cat was already well established by the end of the 19th century. The clarity originally reached concerning the phylogenetic relationships of the cave lion was then obscured by the use of unsuitable methodologies during the 20th century, before being restored with a series of revising publications and then conclusively demonstrated by independent ancient DNA studies at the beginning of the 21st century. However, the use of different taxonomic concepts led to an academic dispute over the number of lion species that persists to this day. A three-species concept grades lions up to the rank of their own subgenus (_Leo_) and divides the recent _P. leo _from the _P. spelaea _of Europe and Siberia (including Beringia), and from the American _P. atrox_. Under the widely accepted monospecific concept, these three forms are classified as subspecies or subspecies groups, with the cave lion classified as _P. leo spelaea_. The second part of the review outlines the evolutionary history of the cave lion. The speciation of the lion obviously began later than 1.7 Myr BP in Africa. The first appearance of the cave lion line in Europe is represented by the early _P. leo fossilis_, dated to the Early Middle Pleistocene MIS 15. The Late Middle Pleistocene was the time of transition to the later _P. leo spelaea _and, at its end, of the first dispersal of the cave lion to North America. At the end of the Late Pleistocene, the genetic variability of cave lion populations seems to have been drastically reduced. Cave lions became extinct in the 12th millennium BP in Eurasia and in the 11th millennium BP in North America. In the third part, predictor-based estimations are provided for a number of life-history and behavioural parameters. The Late Pleistocene cave lion had a considerably stouter stature than recent lions, with an estimated body-mass range of between 140 and 400 kg. A cave lioness would typically have reproduced first at the age of five years. The highest population density in optimum habitat may have varied from 5 to 10 individuals per 100 kmý. Prey focus mass is estimated for males at 1,000 kg (usual range 100 to 2,000 kg) and for females at 500 kg (usual range 50 to 1,000 kg). All large mammals of the mammoth steppe, including young mammoth, were likely to be the regular prey of cave lions. A prey focus mass kill would also have provided enormous benefit to a diverse range of scavengers. Only two competitor species could have had any significant impact on the cave lion - namely, the lesser scimitar cat (_Homotherium latidens_) and Palaeolithic man. |
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