Overview The American lion, at times called the North American cave lion or Naegele's giant jaguar, was an extinct species of lion that had a sister lineage in the slightly smaller European cave lion. It was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna and hunted large game as with giant camel, ground sloth, bison, elk, moose, mammoth and other ungulates. As a predator that stayed largely to the cold grassland savanna, its description as a "cave lion" is derived from its habit of taking to dwelling in caves to beat the elements, as well as rest and shelter in, suggesting the animal was at least in part boreal, though no further north than the now United States of America.
Compared to the modern lion, Panthera leo, it is approximately twenty-five percent larger, with males weighing approximately seven-hundred and fifty pounds (averaged), four feet tall at the shoulder, eleven and a half feet from nose to tail, with large bones and musculature, and pronounced legs suggesting the cat was capable of sprinting further and faster than its extant relative. Compared to its distant cousin in Smilodon fatalis, it was a larger animal and focused more upon an ambush and chase technique than explicitly attacking from ambush by leap. Its unusual coloration, found to be an odd beige and red, suggests it was highly camouflaged for the diverse environment it survived in that included open grassland and forest, with the added benefit of having a substantially thicker and looser hide than modern lions, which made it more difficult for extremely dangerous prey to penetrate during acts of resistance to predation.
It has been theorized by analysis of skeletal structure and density that the cave lion had a significantly stronger forequarter than modern lions in the forelimbs and with the added strength of greater bite force retention against struggling prey, according to a Zx/Zy ratio study conducted for the Journal of Zoology. From another study, Phylogeny of the Great Cats (Felidae: Panterinae), and the Influence of Fossil Taxa and Missing Characters, it was concluded the American lion is more similar to jaguars than the lion morphologically. However, these understandings do not seem to dissuade the general pride or coalition style behavior associated with the species, or that it is thought to be a nocturnal, or at least crepuscular, predator.
The estimated bite force, not at end point, is one-thousand-eight-hundred pounds per square inch, over twice that of the African lion, with the greatest point of force being leveraged at four inch canine teeth, which was not calculated in Therrien's 2005 study. Each claw, roughly that the size of a Siberian tiger's, was better anchored by ligament to the cat's paws, suggesting they could collapse and hold better on prey.
Description: Adult, sexually mature male member of Panthera leo atrox, adjusted for averaged ranges in attributes. Standard, no color morph, light winterized tan-beige coat, darker rust rosette camouflage, no defining markings, marring or scarification. Rogue, unaccompanied by coalition or pride. No special outstanding qualities or conditions such as malnutrition or illness.
