Sri Lanka Lion

Taxobox
name = Sri Lanka Lion
status = Fossil
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Mammalia
ordo = Carnivora
familia = Felidae
genus = "Panthera"
species = "P. leo"
subspecies = "P. l. sinhaleyus"
trinomial = "Panthera leo sinhaleyus"
trinomial_authority = Deraniyagala, 1939
synonyms = "Leo leo sinhaleyus"

The Sri Lanka Lion ("Panthera leo sinhaleyus"), also known as the Ceylon Lion, was a prehistoric subspecies of lion, endemic to Sri Lanka. It appears to have become extinct prior to the arrival of culturally modern humans, c. 37,000 years BC.

This lion is only known from two teeth found in depostits at Kuruwita. Based on these teeth, P. Deraniyagala erected in 1939 this subspecies. However, there is insufficient information to determine how it might differ from other subspecies of lion. Deraniyagala did not explain explicitly how he diagnosed the holotype of this subspecies as belonging to a lion, though he justified its allocation to a distinct subspecies of lion by its being "narrower and more elongate" than those of recent lions in the British Natural History Museum collection.

ee also

*Eurasian cave lion
*Asiatic lion

References

* Kelum Manamendra-Arachchi, Rohan Pethiyagoda, Rajith Dissanayake, Madhava Meegaskumbura. 2005. A second extinct big cat from the late Quaternary of Sri Lanka. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. Supplement No. 12: 423–434. National University of Singapore. [http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/s12/s12rbz423-434.pdf Online pdf]