Panthera spelaea instance of fossil taxon
Taxonomy
Felis spelaea was the scientific name used by Georg August Goldfuss in 1810 for a fossil lion skull that was excavated in a cave in southern Germany. It possibly dates to the Würm glaciation.Several authors regarded Panthera spelaea as a subspecies of the modern lion, and therefore as Panthera leo spelaea.
One author considered the cave lion to be more closely related to the tiger based on a comparison of skull shapes, and proposed the scientific name Panthera tigris spelaea.Results from morphological studies showed that it is distinct in cranial and dental anatomy to justify the specific status of Panthera spelaea. Results of phylogenetic studies also support this assessment.In 2001, the subspecies Panthera spelaea vereshchagini avagy a Beringi barlangi oroszlán was proposed for seven specimens found in Siberia and Yukon, which have smaller skulls and teeth than the average P. spelaea. Before 2020, genetic analysis using ancient DNA provided no evidence for their distinct subspecific status; DNA signatures from P. spelaea from Europe and Alaska were indistinguishable, suggesting one large panmictic population. However, analysis of mitochondrial genome sequences from 31 cave lions showed that they fall into two monophyletic clades. One lived across western Europe and the other was restricted to Beringia during the Pleistocene. For this reason, the Beringian population is considered a distinct subspecies, P. s. vereshchagini.Evolution
Lion-like pantherine felids first appeared in the Tanzanian Olduvai Gorge about 1.7 to 1.2 million years ago. These cats dispersed to Europe from East Africa in the first half of the  Middle  Pleistocene, giving rise to P. fossilis in Central Europe by 610,000 years ago. Panthera spelaea evolved from P. fossilis about 460,000 years ago in central Europe during the late Saalian glaciation or early Eemian and would have been common throughout Eurasia from 450,000 to 14,000 years ago. Recent nuclear genomic evidence suggest that interbreeding between modern lions and all Eurasian fossil lions took place up until 500,000 years ago, but by 470,000 years ago, no subsequent interbreeding between the two lineages occurred.P. spelaea bone fragments excavated in Poland were radiocarbon dated to between the early and late Weichselian glaciation, and are between 109,000 and 57,000 years old. In Eurasia, it became extinct between 14,900 and 14,100 years ago, and survived in Beringia until 13,800 to 13,300 years ago as the Weichselian glaciation receded. Mitochondrial DNA sequence data from fossil lion remains show that the American lion represents a sister group of P. spelaea, and likely arose when an early P. spelaea population became isolated south of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet about 340,000 years ago.
The following cladogram shows the genetic relationship between P. spelaea and other pantherine cats.
type of example of manifestation of representation of