Thursday, April 02, 2009
Pleistocene lions
Lions just aren't what they used to be.
‘These ancient lions were like a super-sized version of today’s lions, up to 25 per cent bigger than those we know today and, in the Americas, with longer legs adapted for endurance running,’ said Dr Ross Barnett who conducted the work at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. ‘What our genetic evidence shows is that these ancient extinct lions and the lions of today were very closely related. Meanwhile, cave art suggests that they formed prides, although the males appear not to have had manes.’...
The British and European lions and their American counterparts lived in a very different world from the African savannah we associate with these big cats today: during the Pleistocene the UK landscape was more like the icy tundra of the modern Russian Steppe and was home to herds of large animals such as mammoth, woolly rhino and giant deer. 13,000 years ago the lions, along with all these giant herbivores, died out in a mass extinction.
On the one hand, mammoths and woolly rhinos sound pretty cool. On the other hand, living in Princeton as I do I am not sure I would go in for "giant deer."
CWCID: Jungle Trader.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Apr 02, 07:42:00 AM:
He's referring to Megaceros, the Giant Irish Elk, which died out with the rest of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene. There used to be a skeleton of Megaceros in the Princeton University Natural History Museum in Guyot Hall, but since that's been liquidated, I don't know what's become of him.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Thu Apr 02, 06:01:00 PM:
*sigh* Another senseless extinction caused by prehistoric man and his CO2 spewing campfires, which warmed the pristine tundra of ancient Britian and caused untold environmental damage. If only there were some way of reducing our CO2 production to pre-historical lows, we could bring back this ancient and noble beast to the natural envioment to which it thrived, a frozen and ice-packed England. The blame for this destruction can be placed right at the furry feet of the ancient Republicans, who thought nothing of chopping down forests with cruel flint axes simply for their own physical enjoyment and to contribute to Pleistocene Warming.
Oh wait, April Fools day was yesterday. Sorry. :)
