American lion

Panthera atrox, better known as the American lion, also called the North American lion, or American cave lion, is an extinct pantherine cat. Panthera atrox lived in North America during the late Pleistocene epoch and the early Holocene epoch, from around 340,000 to 11,000 years ago. The species was initially described by American paleontologist Joseph Leidy in 1853 based on a fragmentary mandible (jawbone) from Mississippi; the name means "savage" or "cruel". The status of the species is debated, with some mammalogists and paleontologists considering it a distinct species or a subspecies of Panthera leo, which contains living lions. However, novel genetic evidence has shown that it is instead from a sister lineage with the cave lion (P. spelaea), evolving after its geographic separation. Its fossils have been excavated from Alaska to Mexico. It was about 25% larger than the modern lion, making it one of the largest known felids. The first specimen now assigned to Panthera atrox was collected in the 1830s and placed in the collection of by William Henry Huntingtion Esquire, who announced their discovery to the American Philosophical Society on April 1, 1836 and placed with other fossils from Huntington's collection in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The specimen had been collected in ravines in Natchez, Mississippi and that were dated to the Pleistocene and the specimen consisted only of a partial left mandible with 3 molars and a partial canine. The fossils didn't get proper description until in 1853, Joseph Leidy named the fragmentary specimen (ANSP 12546), Felis atrox ("savage cat") Leidy named another species in 1873, Felis imperialis, based on a mandible fragment from Pleistocene gravels in Livermore Valley, California. F. imperialis however is considered a junior synonym of Panthera atrox. Few additional discoveries came until 1907, when the American Museum of Natural History and College, Alaska collected several Panthera atrox skulls in a locality originally found in 1803 by gold miners in Kotzebue, Alaska.

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