The American lion (Panthera leo atrox)[2][3][4][note 1] – also known as the North American cave lion[3] – is an extinct subspecies of lion that lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (340,000 to 11,000 years ago).[5]Genetic analysis has revealed that it was the sister lineage to the Eurasian cave lion.[3] It was part of the Pleistocene megafauna, a wide variety of large mammals that lived at the time. The majority of American lion fossils have come from […]

Panthera spelaea, formerly referred to as Panthera leo spelaea,[1][2] is a fossil catbelonging to the genus Panthera, which was described by the German paleontologistGeorg August Goldfuss in 1810 under the scientific name Felis spelaea. The first fossil lion skull was excavated in a cave in southern Germany.[3] It probably dates to the Würm glaciation.[4] The spelaea lion probably evolved in Europe after the third Cromerian interglacial stage, less than 600,000 years ago. Phylogenetic analysis of fossil bone […]