American lions walked all across North America. Fossils reveal themselves from Canada to as far south as Mexico. American lions roamed across North America for thousands of years. Around 10,000 years ago, they went extinct, alongside many other ice age animals.

The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea), often nicknamed the Mega-Lion, is a genus of prehistoric lion that originated during the Pleistocene epoch in what is now Europe. Measuring 3 meters long and weighing 340 kilos, this was the largest cat species of all time.

Jefferson simultaneously identified the cat as both Naegele’s giant jaguar and a subspecies of lion (Panthera leo atrox). While treated and illustrated as a lion, Jefferson repeatedly called the animal a giant jaguar.

Standing at almost four feet (1.2 m) tall at the shoulder, almost eight feet (2.5 m) long, and over 500 pounds (230 kg) in weight, American lions were bigger than modern lions. They had long, slender legs with retractable claws, and they could roar.

There are more tigers in captivity in America than tigers that exist in the wild. There is no wildlife habitat in the US for them and no possibility of introducing them back into the wild because they have been hand fed since they were two days old and not able to hunt for food.

The American lion went extinct along with most of the Pleistocene megafauna during the Quaternary extinction event. The most recent fossil, from Edmonton, dates to 11,355 ± 55 years ago.

spelaea), which lived from about 370,000 to 10,000 years ago. Known from fossils and multiple examples of prehistoric art, the cave ion is characterized by large size (larger than the modern lion), rounded, protruding ears, tufted tail, and perhaps faint, tiger-like stripes.

Panthera spelaea
The oldest fossil evidence of lions is just under 1.5 million years old, but Barnett’s study indicated that Panthera spelaea and Panthera leo had an ancestor almost two million years ago! This means there’s half a million years’ worth of lion evolution we haven’t yet found in the fossil record.

The Barbary lion, also called the North African lion, Berber lion, Atlas lion, and Egyptian lion, is an extinct Panthera leo leo population that lived in North Africa from Morocco to Egypt, especially in the mountains and deserts of the Barbary Coast.

Scientists don’t know exactly why the American cheetah became extinct, but they think that climate change, a shortage of food, and competition from humans, such as through hunting and competition for food, may have played a role.

The largest lion ever recorded in the wild reportedly weighed 690 pounds and was shot in South Africa in 1936. There are two extant subspecies of lions, meaning two subspecies that are not extinct.

The American lion (Panthera atrox) is an extinct pantherine cat that lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch about 340,000 to 11,000 years ago. Its fossils have been excavated from Alaska to Mexico. Genetic analysis has shown that the American lion and the Late Pleistocene Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea) are sister lineages.

Names: The American lion, the North American lion, American cave lion, Naegele’s giant jaguar This extinct and great cat lived in North America and north-western regions of South America in the Pleistocene from 1.8m to 11,000 years ago.

The American lion ( Panthera atrox ), also known as the “North American lion”, or “American cave lion”, is an extinct pantherine cat that lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch and the early Holocene epoch, about 340,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Mitochondrial DNA sequence data from fossil remains suggests that the American lion ( P. atrox) represents a sister lineage to the Eurasian cave lion ( P. spelaea ), and likely arose when an early cave lion population became isolated south of the North American continental ice sheet about 340,000 years ago.