Abstract
The lion Panthera leo was one of the most fearsome beasts which roamed the African and Asian plains with the early pastoralists. Although the lion has been the dominant large carnivore in Africa and south-western Asia for millennia, this may not always have been so. Paintings by Cro-Magnon man, for example, show both the lion and another large felid without a mane or a tufted tail. Along with skeletal remains, this felid has been identified as the cave lion Panthera spelaeus which inhabited Europe between 340 BC and 100 AD. In the fossil evidence from Africa there also are sabre-toothed cats, another large cat Panthera crassidens, and a lion-sized cat with a jaw like a tiger. The rise of the African lion as the dominant carnivore of Africa is therefore relatively recent, and may well have coincided with the rise of man.
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Bothma, J.d.P., Walker, C. (1999). The African lion. In: Larger Carnivores of the African Savannas. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03766-9_2
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