How was the lion discovered, at last?
Answers
Answer:
The lion (Panthera leo) is a large cat of the genus Panthera native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, deep-chested body, short, rounded head, round ears, and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphic; adult male lions are larger than females and have a prominent mane. It is a social species, forming groups called prides. A lion's pride consists of a few adult males, related females, and cubs. Groups of female lions usually hunt together, preying mostly on large ungulates. The lion is an apex and keystone predator; although some lions scavenge when opportunities occur and have been known to hunt humans, the species typically does not.The history of lions in Europe is based on fossils of Pleistocene and Holocene lions excavated in Europe since the early 19th century.[1][2] The first lion fossil was excavated in southern Germany, and described by Georg August Goldfuss using the scientific name Felis spelaea. It probably dates to the Würm glaciation, and is 191,000 to 57,000 years old.[3] Older lion skull fragments were excavated in Germany and described by Wilhelm von Reichenau under Felis fossilis in 1906.[4] These are estimated at between 621,000 and 533,000 years old.[5] The modern lion (Panthera leo) inhabited parts of Southern Europe since the early Holocene.[6][7]
Answer:
Thirty-thousand years ago, different types of lions prowled the globe, hunting prey on four continents. One of the most prolific, the cave lion, roamed from Spain all the way through Eurasia and into modern-day Alaska and the Yukon and was widely depicted in prehistoric cave art.
Meanwhile, the American lion, which was even larger than African lions and saber-toothed tigers, lurked throughout North America and possibly parts of South America. Other lions of various sizes and appearances inhabited Africa, the Middle East, and India. Most of these creatures have since disappeared, but scientists have been able to glean genetic clues that shed new light on them and offer insights into their modern cousins, which now facing their own extinction.
Over the past 150 years, the global population of African lions has declined by more than 20-fold to fewer than 25,000, mostly due to hunting and habitat loss. Roughly 600 Asiatic lions remain in India.
To help save the world’s remaining lions and better understand how the different types are related, an international team of scientists created complete genomes of 20 individual lions, 14 of which died long ago, including two 30,000-year-old cave lions preserved in permafrost in Siberia and the Yukon.
In the study, published May 4 in
