Panthera pardus spelaea

Panthera pardus spelaea, sometimes called the European Ice Age leopard or Late Pleistocene Ice Age leopard, is a fossil leopard subspecies, which roamed Europe in the Late Pleistocene. The youngest known bone fragments date to about 32,000 to 26,000 years ago, and are similar in size to modern leopard bones.[1]

Panthera pardus spelaea
Temporal range: Late Pleistocene
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Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Pantherinae
Genus: Panthera
Species:
P. pardus
Subspecies:
†P. p. spelaea
Trinomial name
Panthera pardus spelaea
Bächler, 1936
Synonyms
  • P. p. antiqua
  • P. p. begoueni
  • P. p. sickenbergi
  • P. p. vraonensis

Taxonomy

Several fossil bones from the Early, Middle and Late Pleistocene were described and proposed as leopard subspecies:

  • P. p. antiqua[2]
  • P. p. begoueni[3]
  • P. p. sickenbergi[4]
  • P. p. vraonensis[5]

These are now considered junior synonyms of spelaea.

Description
Depiction of a leopard (bottom right) and hyena, Chauvet Cave

The European Ice Age leopard is thought to have resembled a snow leopard or Persian leopard in fur pattern. Its skull was medium-long and its characteristics are closest to modern Persian leopards. The only known depiction of this leopard in the Chauvet Cave shows a coat pattern similar to that of modern leopards. It is unclear if the spots were organised in larger rosettes like in modern Persian leopards. In contrast to modern leopards, the belly of the depicted animal is unspotted white. Fossils of small female leopards can sometimes be confused with large male lynxes. Leopards from the cold phases (glacials) of the Late Pleistocene are usually larger than those from the warm phases (interglacials). As in modern leopards, there was a strong sexual dimorphism, with males being larger than females.[1]

Distribution

Pleistocene records

Bone fragments of spelaea leopards were excavated in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Poland and Greece.[6][7][8][9][10]

The earliest known European Ice Age leopard fossils are dated to the late Early Pleistocene and estimated about 600,000 years old. They were excavated in the Grotte du Vallonnet in France and near Mauer in Germany.[7] The most complete skeleton of a spelaea leopard is known from Vjetrenica Cave in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where four leopard fossils were found. These are dated to the end of the Late Pleistocene, about 29,000–37,000 years ago. Cave paintings of spealea leopards in the Chauvet Cave in southern France are dated to about 25,000–37,500 years old. The last European Ice Age leopards vanished from most parts of Europe about 24,000 years ago, just before the Last Glacial Maximum, because the youngest known fossil is 24,000 years old and was found in Croatia. In Germany, the European Ice Age leopard survived at least into the early Weichselian glaciation.[1]

Holocene records

Subfossil leopard remains dated to the Holocene were excavated in Spain, Italy, and the Ponto-Mediterranean and Balkan regions.[11][12][13] The youngest subfossil leopard records in Europe were excavated in Ukraine and dated to the first century CE.[14]

Some subfossils were found in western Greece, close to the Carpathians; others were found in Olbia, Ukraine at the northern coast of the Black Sea. The latter might belong to captive leopards, which could have been introduced from Asia Minor, since Olbia was a Greek colony at this time.

Palaeobiology

Fossils of European Ice Age leopards in Europe are sometimes found in caves, where they apparently sought shelter or hid their prey. They generally preferred smaller caves, most likely because larger caves were usually occupied by larger predators such as cave bears, cave lions (P. spelaea), or humans. In European Ice Age caves, leopard bones are far rarer than those of lions, and all currently known fossils belong to adults, suggesting that they rarely, if ever, raised their cubs in caves. Where leopard remains are found in larger caves, they are often found in the cave's deeper recesses, as in Baumann's and Zoolithen Cave in Germany. It is not precisely known which prey species these leopards hunted, although they may have been similar to modern snow leopards, which prey on ibex, deer and wild boar. It is likely that leopards scavenged or occasionally killed cave bears during hibernation in their dens. During the cold phases, European Ice Age leopards occurred mainly in mountain or alpine boreal forests or in mountains above the treeline, and were not usually found in the lowland mammoth steppes.[1]

See also

References
  1. Diedrich, C. G. (2013). "Late Pleistocene leopards across Europe – northernmost European German population, highest elevated records in the Swiss Alps, complete skeletons in the Bosnia Herzegowina Dinarids and comparison to the Ice Age cave art". Quaternary Science Reviews. 76: 167–193. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.05.009.
  2. Cuvier, G. (1835). Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles ou l'on retablit les caractères de plusieurs animaux dont les revolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces. Paris: Dufour et E. d'Ocagne.
  3. Fraipont, C. (1923). "Crane de Panthère ou de Lynx géant provenent de la caverne de Trois-Frères (Ariège)". Revue d'Anthropologie. 33: 42.
  4. Schütt, Von G. (1969). "Panthera pardus sickenbergi n. subsp. Aus den Mauerer Sanden". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie: 299–310.
  5. Nagel, D. (1999). "Panthera pardus vraonensis n. ssp., a new leopard from the Pleistocene of Vraona/Greece". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie Monatshefte. 3: 129–150.
  6. Bächler, E. (1936). Das Wildkirchli: eine Monographie. St. Gallen: H. Tschudy.
  7. Ghezzo, E. and Rook, L. (2015). "The remarkable Panthera pardus (Felidae, Mammalia) record from Equi (Massa, Italy): taphonomy, morphology, and paleoecology". Quaternary Science Reviews. 110: 131–151. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.12.020.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. Sauqué, V., Rabal-Garcés, R., Sola-Almagro, C., Cuenca-Bescós, G. (2014). "Bone Accumulation by Leopards in the Late Pleistocene in the Moncayo Massif (Zaragoza, NE Spain)". PLoS ONE. 9 (3): e92144. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092144. PMC 3958443. PMID 24642667.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Marciszak, A., Krajcarz, M.T., Krajcarz, M. and Stefaniak, K. (2011). "The first record of leopard Panthera pardus LINNAEUS, 1758 from the Pleistocene of Poland". Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia-Series A: Vertebrata. 54 (1–2): 39–46. doi:10.3409/azc.54a_1-2.39-46.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. Τsoukala, Ε., Bartsiokas, Α., Chatzοpoulou, Κ. and Lazaridis, G. (2006). "Quaternary mammalian remains from the Kitseli Pothole (Alea, Nemea, Peloponnese)". Επιστημονική Επετηρίδα του Τμήματος Γεωλογίας. 98: 273–284.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. Altuna, J. (1967). Fauna de mamiferos del yacimiento prehistórico de Marizulo (Urnieta, Guipúzcoa). Munibe (Antropologia - Arkeologia) 19: 271−297.
  12. De Grossi Mazzorin, J. (1995). La fauna rinvenuta nell’area della Meta Sudans nel quadro evolutivo degli animali domestici in Italia. Padusa Quaderni 1: 309−318.
  13. Symeonidis, N., Bachmayer, F., Zapfe, H. (1980). Ergebnisse weiterer Grabungen in der Höhle von Vraona (Attika, Griechenland). Annales Gaeologiques des Pays Hellaeniques Athaenes 30: 291−299.
  14. Sommer, R. S.; Benecke, N. (2006). "Late Pleistocene and Holocene development of the felid fauna (Felidae) of Europe: a review". Journal of Zoology. 269: 7–19. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.2005.00040.x.
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