The Lion, the Land Bridge, and the New World

[UngulateNerd92]

Whatever happened to North America’s lions?

The Ice Age was kind to large mammals. From about 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago, they had the space—and the time—to roam far. Lions, for instance, were once found around the world. After evolving in eastern Africa, the big cats padded through Europe and Asia and eventually crossed into North America by way of Beringia, a now-sunken continent that once connected Siberia to Alaska and Yukon.

Lions prowled North America for tens of thousands of years before going extinct. Today, no lions lounge in southern Alberta canola fields or chase prey through Yukon grasslands—so what happened?

The Lion, the Land Bridge, and the New World | Hakai Magazine

 

[UngulateNerd92]

@Arizona Docent despite not necessarily being interested in paleontology, but having a keen interest in cats (Family: Felidae), you may find this article interesting.

 

[Pantheraman]

Here's a little story of mine that relates to this.

A while ago I started creating a continent called Kalamonga, which as you can probably guess has a lot of big cats. 5 species to be exact, and maybe a 6th one on the way. One of them is descended from Panthera atrox and using the old divergence estimate of 340,00 years ago, I used that within the big cat evolution timeline for Kalamonga.

Then this article says the first lions wandered into North America 165,000 years ago. Now I'm gonna have to rewrite it.