Panthera pardus spelaea

Panthera pardus spelaea, sometimes called the European Ice Age leopard or Late Pleistocene 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:
Skeleton at the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze
Rock art depiction of a leopard from Chauvet Cave
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
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
  • Felis pardus spelaea Bächler, 1936
  • Felis antiquus Cuvier, 1835
  • Panthera pardus antiqua (Cuvier, 1835)
  • Panthera pardus begoueni Fraipoint, 1923
  • Panthera pardus sickenbergi Schutt, 1969
  • Panthera pardus vraonensis Nagel, 1999

Taxonomy

The subspecies was first described as Felis pardus spelaea by Emil Bächler in 1936.[2]

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

  • P. p. antiqua[3]
  • P. p. begoueni[4]
  • P. p. sickenbergi[5]
  • P. p. vraonensis[6]

These are now considered junior synonyms of P. p. spelaea.

Description

The European Ice Age leopard's skull was medium-long, and its characteristics are closest to the Panthera pardus tulliana subspecies. An apparent depiction of this leopard in the Chauvet Cave shows a coat pattern similar to that of modern leopards but with a unspotted belly, presumably white. Like other mammals, leopards from the cold glacial periods of the Late Pleistocene are usually larger than those from the warm interglacial phases. As in modern leopards, there was a strong sexual dimorphism, with males being larger than females.[1]

Distribution

Pleistocene records

Bone fragments of P. p. spelaea were excavated in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Poland and Greece.[2][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 P. p. spelaea 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. A cave painting of a leopard in the Chauvet Cave in southern France is 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. 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 Ukraine, close to the Carpathians; others in Olbia, on 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.[14]

Modern leopards are still part of the present European fauna, being found in the wild in the North Caucasus.[15] In 1889, a leopard was killed in the Greek island of Samos, and local folklore suggests that leopards have swum from Anatolia to Samos at different times in history.[16]

Palaeobiology
Skull with a hole determined to have been caused by a lion bite

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. Bibcode:2013QSRv...76..167D. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.05.009.
  2. Bächler, E. (1936). Das Wildkirchli: eine Monographie. St. Gallen: H. Tschudy. p. 254.
  3. 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.
  4. Fraipont, C. (1923). "Crane de Panthère ou de Lynx géant provenent de la caverne de Trois-Frères (Ariège)". Revue d'Anthropologie. 33: 42.
  5. Schütt, Von G. (1969). "Panthera pardus sickenbergi n. subsp. Aus den Mauerer Sanden". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie: 299–310.
  6. Nagel, D. (1999). "Panthera pardus vraonensis n. ssp., a new leopard from the Pleistocene of Vraona/Greece". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Monatshefte. 1999 (3): 129–150. doi:10.1127/njgpm/1999/1999/129.
  7. Ghezzo, E.; 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.
  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. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...992144S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092144. PMC 3958443. PMID 24642667.
  9. Marciszak, A.; Krajcarz, M.T.; Krajcarz, M.; 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.
  10. Τsoukala, Ε.; Bartsiokas, Α.; Chatzοpoulou, Κ.; Lazaridis, G. (2006). "Quaternary mammalian remains from the Kitseli Pothole (Alea, Nemea, Peloponnese)". Επιστημονική Επετηρίδα του Τμήματος Γεωλογίας. 98: 273–284.
  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.
  15. Stein, A.B.; Athreya, V.; Gerngross, P.; Balme, G.; Henschel, P.; Karanth, U.; Miquelle, D.; Rostro-Garcia, S.; Kamler, J. F.; Laguardia, A.; Khorozyan, I. & Ghoddousi, A. (2020) [amended version of 2019 assessment]. "Panthera pardus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2020: e.T15954A163991139. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-1.RLTS.T15954A163991139.en. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  16. Masetti, M. (2012). Atlas of terrestrial mammals of the Ionian and Aegean islands. Walter de Gruyter.
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