Prehistoric lion. Species: Cave lion. Where and when did cave lions live?

Sometimes they ask: “Which of the large predatory animals lived in the Ice Age in Europe and North Asia?” And many do not believe when you answer: "Lion."

Found at the mouth of the river In 1891, I.D. Chersky was very interested in Yana's femur of one large predator. Despite some doubts and logical incompatibility, he concluded that in the age of the mammoth, there were tigers next to him in Yakutia. Since then, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, and many paleontological finds have been collected.

In 1971, Professor N.K. Vereshchagin in the book "Materials of Anthropogenic Fauna in the USSR", based on the study of the bones of lions found in the Soviet Union, as well as paleontological materials from North America, published a large article. In this work, data were used on exhibits - lion bones found at different times in Yakutia (they are stored at the Moscow Zoological Institute). So our story about lions will mainly be based on the materials of N.K. Vereshchagin.

Single bones of lions were found in more than ten places in the northern and central regions of Yakutia. In 1930, M.M. Ermolaev on the Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, in 1963, the geologist F.F. Ilyin found the skulls of lions that lived in the Ice Age on the Mokhoho River, a tributary of the Olenok. The parietal and other bones of a lion found on Duvanny Yar in Kolyma are in the museum of the YanC of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In addition, the bones of the king of beasts, a mighty lion, were found at the mouth of the Syuryuktyakh - a tributary of the Indigirka, at Berezovka - a tributary of the Kolyma, Adycha - a tributary of the Yana, as well as in the basins of the river. Aldan and Vilyuy. There are some rare finds in regional museums. The Ytyk-Kyuel Museum of the Tattinsky District exhibits the lower jaw of a lion that lived more than ten thousand years ago.

So, according to reliable scientific data, in the Ice Age in Yakutia, along with such giants as the mammoth and rhinoceros, there lived not a tiger, as was sometimes written, but a lion. In reference books and in scientific literature, it is called not just a lion, but a cave lion. In fact, the lions of the Ice Age in Yakutia did not live in caves. They must have hunted wild horses, bulls, and deer on the ice-free plains and foothills. The ferocious and powerful predator in question is referred to by paleontologists not only as a cave lion, but sometimes also as a tiger or Pleistocene lion. However, he most of all looked like a lion.

For the first time this predator appeared in the central steppes of Europe and Asia just before the beginning of the Quaternary period. Having greatly multiplied at the height of the Ice Age, at the very end of the late Pleistocene, they, like mammoths, for some reason died out. Pleistocene lions were not the direct ancestors of the lions now found in Africa. During the late Pleistocene period, they spread throughout Northeast Asia and North America. As evidenced by fossil bones, very large cave lions were found in North America. Modern African lions in length reach a maximum of 2.2 m, while the lions of Eurasia of the Ice Age - 2.5-3.4 m. And the predators of North America, which died out tens of thousands of years ago, had a length of up to 2.7-4.0 m!

When the Ice Age began in the northern latitudes of Eurasia and North America, these large animals were sometimes forced to hide from snowy winds and cold weather in mountain caves. And they began to encounter people of the Stone Age who lived there, who left many drawings of lions on the walls of their dwellings. As archaeologists and geologists write, such "portraits" of lions were found in caves in France, Spain, England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy and in the USSR - near Odessa, Tiraspol, Kyiv, in the Urals, in the Perm region.

Sometimes sculptures of lions made of bone, stone and clay are also found. The people of the Stone Age, fearing these formidable predators, worshiped them so as not to be torn to pieces on the hunt and in fights in the caves. Experts confirm that the bones of some lions, especially the interorbitals, have pathological changes, defects associated with diseases. It can be seen that they were prone to bone diseases, suffered from gadflies or similar tsetse flies that infect livestock in our time.

Only two, almost completely preserved, cave lion skeletons are known throughout the world. One of them is considered the most valuable exhibit of the Brno Museum in Czechoslovakia. The second skeleton was found in the United States in oil that thickened like tar and then hardened. When you look at the photograph of the skeleton, the strongly elongated legs and tail of the cave lion are striking. The chest is narrow, the neck is rather long. Judging by the skeleton, the beast had very strong forelimbs. On the lower and upper jaws there are powerful sharp fangs similar to the head of a kyle.

Currently, the number of lion populations in the world is very small. At the end of the 60s, there were 250 predators in the zoos of India, about 150 thousand in the national parks of African states ...

Sometimes they ask about bears from the time of the mammoth and the cave lion. In 1966, in Poland, during the extraction of marble in the Sudeten Mountains, a previously unknown mountain cave with branches of several floors was discovered. As scientists suggest, it was formed about 50 million years ago as a result of leaching of limestone by groundwater circulating through the cracks of these water-soluble rocks. In this cave, during the Ice Age, both wild animals and people of that time found shelter. During the exploration of the cave, about 40,000 different bear bones were found.* Therefore, it was called the "Bear Cave". Along with the remains of so many bears, rare bones of wolves and martens were found. In one of the deepenings of the cave, people of the Stone Age lived. When more than half of the territory of Europe was under an ice sheet, and bears, and wolves, and lions, apparently, were forced to take refuge in caves. The emaciated, disease-prone animals perished en masse. This is how the animal cemetery was born. However, scientists have not yet given an exact explanation for the unusual accumulation of bear bones.

The "Bear Cave" is very long, has branches hundreds of meters long. They, either narrowing or expanding, form underground halls, reminiscent of fairy-tale palaces. When you illuminate the dark halls, it is as if you find yourself in the country of Olonkho, and an enchanting picture of an unknown underworld opens before you. The ceiling is decorated with hanging crystal-like icicles. Below - a labyrinth sparkling with various sparks of light, graceful outgrowths of calcareous formations! In places they converge with the same color and brilliance in stepped shafts, similar to streams frozen in a swift run. Everything beautiful in nature is the property of all mankind. That is why the "Bear Cave" was included in the tourist route, and construction work began here in 1980.

There are no such large caves in Yakutia, but individual bones of a bear, wolf, elk and other mammoth companions are found. By the way, the corpse of a wolverine was once discovered at the famous Berelekhsky cemetery.

Many questions arise about the fact that in the Ice Age the inhabitants of the harsh North were relatives of miniature, but swift-footed roe deer. The inhabitants of Yakutia are well aware of these graceful animals that move with such smooth and wide jumps, as if you see them in slow motion frames.

One of the roe deer species, named sorgelia in honor of the German geologist who was the first to find the skull of an ancient goat in the world, lived in Yakutia next to mammoths during the Ice Age. The sorgelia skull was found in 1973 on the Adycha River (a tributary of the Yana) by local history teacher M.A. Sleptsov. This is the second such trophy after the discovery by a German geologist. As a rare exhibit, it is now kept in the Central Moscow Zoological Museum, and a plaster copy of the skull is exhibited in the Adychansk School Museum...

When you talk about the Ice Age, the giants of that time, listeners usually ask a lot of questions. These are mostly questions related to the latest geological history of the Earth, called the Quaternary. In just one million years, there have been significant fluctuations in the climate of the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth, great changes in the animal and plant kingdoms. The world of large mammals suffered especially tangible damage. In Yakutia and throughout northern Asia and Europe, mammoths, woolly rhinos, lions, wild bulls, and sorgelias have completely died out. Most of the surviving animals have significantly decreased in size. Modern horses, elks, polar bears, compared to their ancient Ice Age relatives, are shredded species.

All times. Previously, its status was not entirely clear, but today it is considered a clearly distinguishable subspecies of modern lions. It was first described by the German physician and naturalist Georg August Goldfus, who found the skull of a cave lion in the Franconian Alba.

In Soviet paleontology, at the initiative of Nikolai Vereshchagin, the cave lion was called tigrolev.

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Spreading

In Europe, the first lions appeared about 700,000 years ago and belonged to the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis, the so-called Mosbach Lion. That it is sometimes also referred to as the cave lion can be misleading. As a rule, the term cave lion refers to a later subspecies Panthera leo spelaea. Mosbach lions reached a length of up to 2.4 m, excluding the tail, and were half a meter larger than modern lions. They were the size of a liger. From this large subspecies came the cave lion, which appeared about 300,000 years ago. It was distributed throughout northern Eurasia and even during the glaciations penetrated deep into the north. In the northeast of Eurasia, a separate subspecies was formed, the so-called East Siberian cave lion ( Panthera leo vereshchagini), which through the then existing land connection between Chukotka and Alaska reached the American continent. Spreading south, it developed into the American lion ( panthera leo atrox). The East Siberian cave lion became extinct at the end of the last major glaciation about 10 thousand years ago. The European cave lion died out, probably in the same period, but it is possible that it remained for some time on the Balkan Peninsula. Regarding the lions that existed on it until the beginning of our era, it is not known whether they were cave lions.

Appearance

The skeleton of an adult male cave lion, found in 1985 near the German Siegsdorf, had a height at the withers of 1.20 m and a length of 2.1 m without tail. This corresponds to a very large modern lion. At the same time, the Siegsdorf lion was inferior to many of its relatives. Cave lions were on average 5-10% larger than modern lions, but did not reach the huge size of Mosbach lions and American lions. Rock paintings of the Stone Age allow us to draw some conclusions about the coloring of the coat and mane of the cave lion. Particularly impressive images of lions have been found in southern France in the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche department, as well as in the Vogelherdhöhle cave in the Swabian Alb. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often this image shows the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.

Lifestyle

Relatives

In contrast to the Mosbach lion, regarding the classification of which as Panthera leo fossilis unanimity has always reigned among scientists, there has been a long debate about the cave lion, whether it is a lion, a tiger, or even whether it should be singled out as a separate species. In 2004 ( P.l. vereshchagini) and American lion ( P.l. atrox). All modern subspecies of lions belong to the group Leo. Both groups separated about 600 thousand years ago. Individual fossil specimens of the extinct American lion were larger than the Mosbach lion and thus were among the largest felids that ever existed. Previously, they were considered a separate species, called the giant jaguar. According to the latest research, the American lion, like the cave lion, was not a separate species, but a subspecies of lions (

The cave lion is a fossil subspecies of the lion that lived during the Pleistocene era (part of the Quaternary period). He lived in Europe and Siberia.

Until recently, its systematic status was controversial, some considered it a separate feline species.

It is now more or less conclusively established that the cave lion was just a subspecies of the lion, although clearly distinct.

Appearance

The cave lion, like other representatives of the ancient Cenozoic fauna, was quite large. In length, it reached more than two meters, excluding the tail, and its height at the withers exceeded 120 cm.

The cave lion was larger than the current lions, but was not the largest - many of its close relatives were much larger.

Cave lions appeared about 300 thousand years ago and existed for a very long time - until the appearance of the first human cultures. A large number of rock carvings of a cave lion are known, which helped scientists draw conclusions regarding its appearance:

• The color of his coat, apparently, was uniform, without spots or stripes;
• Many drawings depict a brush on his tail - the same as that of modern lions;
• Almost all drawings depict a cave lion without a mane, so one might think that he did not have a mane at all or it was small.

Relationship with other extinct lions

The cave lion descended from the more ancient Mosbach subspecies that appeared in Europe about 700 thousand years ago. This lion was even larger and the size of a liger. In some sources, it is the Mosbach lions that are called cave lions, but this is incorrect and can lead to confusion.

cave lions photo

The cave lion turned out to be more enduring than its Mosbach ancestor and went far to the north, even during glaciations. Other subspecies originated from it - the East Siberian cave lion (died out only 10 thousand years ago) and the American lion, into which the cave lion turned into, having crossed to the American continent along the then existing Bering bridge between Chukotka and Alaska.

Lifestyle. Food

As already mentioned, the cave lion was a very hardy predator and could exist even in severe glaciation. The paw prints of lions have been preserved, which are found next to the paws of reindeer. These deer appear to have been part of the diet of the cave lions; also lions hunted wild horses, bulls, antelopes.

In the Pleistocene deposits near German Darmstadt, the bones of a cave lion were found, on the leg of which there were traces of a serious inflammation that prevented him from walking, but later disappeared. This detail allowed us to draw a grandiose conclusion: a serious illness did not lead to the death of a lion, which means that other lions supplied it with food; therefore, cave lions, like their current counterparts, lived in prides.

Despite the name, cave lions rarely visited caves. They preferred to live in the open, and went into the caves during illness or in order to die. Since they most often died in caves, most of the fossils of cave lions were found there.

cave lion with prey photo

Monotony in diet (except for ungulates, cave lions occasionally hunted cave bears) could cause the extinction of these predators. In the era of global warming, reindeer and cave bears began to gradually disappear, because of which the lions lost their main source of food and also began to die out.

Unlike them, modern lions attack any living creature, so they are not threatened with extinction from hunger.

History of study

The first representatives of prehistoric big cats in the north - in Yakutia - were discovered in 1891 by a researcher named Chersky. He suggested that the remains belong to ancient tigers. However, the discovery was quickly forgotten.

They remembered it almost a hundred years later, when the famous paleontologist Nikolai Vereshchagin proved that they do not belong to tigers, but to cave lions.

Vereshchagin later wrote an entire book dedicated to these fossil lions. True, at first he suggested calling them tigers, which today can lead to confusion: in our time, it is customary to call a tiger a modern hybrid of a lion and a tiger. Subsequently, the remains of cave lions were found in various places in Europe, especially in Germany and France.

• Class - Mammals
• Squad - Carnivores
• Family - Feline
• Genus - Panthers
• View - Lion
• Subspecies - Cave lion

Un, the son of the Bull, liked to visit underground caves. He caught blind fish and colorless crayfish there with Zur, the son of Earth, the last of the tribe of Wa, People without shoulders, who survived the extermination of his people by the Red Dwarfs.

For days on end Un and Zur wandered along the course of the underground river. Often its shore was just a narrow stone cornice. Sometimes I had to crawl along a narrow corridor of porphyry, gneiss, basalt. Zur lit a resin torch from the branches of a turpentine tree, and the crimson flame was reflected in the sparkling quartz vaults and in the swiftly flowing waters of the underground stream. Leaning over the black water, they watched the pale, colorless animals swimming in it, then walked on, to the place where the road was blocked by a blank granite wall, from under which an underground river burst out noisily. For a long time, Un and Zur stood idle in front of the black wall. How they wanted to overcome this mysterious barrier that the Ulamr tribe had encountered six years ago, during their migration from north to south.

Un, the son of the Bull, belonged, according to the custom of the tribe, to his mother's brother. But he preferred his father Nao, the son of the Leopard, from whom he inherited a powerful build, tireless lungs and extraordinary acuteness of feelings. His hair fell over his shoulders in thick, stiff strands, like the mane of a wild horse; the eyes were the color of gray clay. His great physical strength made him a dangerous opponent. But even more than Nao, Un was prone to generosity, if the defeated lay before him, prostrated on the ground. Therefore, the Ulamry, paying tribute to the strength and courage of Un, treated him with some disdain.

He always hunted alone, or with Xur, whom the Ulamry despised for being weak, though no one was so adept at finding firestones and crafting tinder from the soft core of wood.

Xur had a narrow, lizard-like body. His shoulders were so sloping that his arms seemed to come straight out of his torso. From time immemorial, all the Wa, the tribe of the Shoulderless People, looked like this. Xur thought slowly, but his mind was more sophisticated than that of the people of the Ulamr tribe.

Zur liked to visit underground caves even more than Un. His ancestors and the ancestors of his ancestors had always lived in regions abounding in streams and rivers, some of which disappeared under the hills or were lost in the depths of the mountain ranges.

One morning the friends were wandering along the river bank. They saw the crimson ball of the sun rise above the horizon and golden light flooded the surroundings. Xur knew that he liked to follow the fast-moving waves; Ung gave himself up to this pleasure unconsciously. They headed towards the underground caverns. Mountains rose in front of them, high and impregnable. Steep, sharp peaks stretched like an endless wall from north to south, and nowhere was a passage visible between them. Un and Zur, like the rest of the Ulamr tribe, yearned passionately to overcome this invincible barrier.

For more than fifteen years, the Ulamry, having left their native places, wandered from the northwest to the southeast. Moving south, they soon noticed that the further they went, the richer the land, and the more abundant the booty. And gradually people got used to this endless journey.

But a huge mountain range stood in their way, and the advance of the tribe to the south stopped. The Ulamr searched in vain for a passage among the impregnable stone peaks.

Un and Zur sat down to rest in the reeds, under the black poplars. Three mammoths, huge and majestic, marched along the opposite bank of the river. You could see antelopes running in the distance; the rhinoceros appeared from behind a rocky ledge. Excitement seized Nao's son. How he wanted to overcome the space separating him from the prey!

Sighing, he got up and strode upstream, followed by Zur. Soon they found themselves in front of a dark recess in the rock, from where a river burst out with noise. Bats rushed into the darkness, frightened by the appearance of people.

Excited by the sudden thought that came into his mind, Un said to Zur:

There are other lands beyond the mountains!

Zur replied:

The river flows from sunny countries.

People without shoulders have long known that all rivers and streams have a beginning and an end.

The blue dusk of the cave was replaced by the darkness of the underground labyrinth. Xur ignited one of the resinous branches he had taken with him. But friends could do without light - they knew so well every turn of the underground path.

The whole day Un and Zur walked along the gloomy passages along the course of the underground river, jumping over pits and clefts, and in the evening they fell asleep soundly on the shore, having supper of crayfish baked in the ashes.

During the night they were awakened by a sudden jolt that seemed to come from the very bowels of the mountain. There was a roar of falling stones, a crack of crumbling rocks. Then there was silence. And, not having understood what was the matter, the friends fell asleep again.

Vague memories took hold of Xur.

“The earth shook,” he said.

Und did not understand Xur's words and did not try to understand their meaning. His thoughts were short and swift. He could only think of the obstacles directly in front of him or the prey he was chasing. His impatience grew, and he kept accelerating his steps, so that Xur could hardly keep up with him. Long before the end of the second day, they reached the place where a blank stone wall usually blocked their way.

Zur lit a new resinous torch. A bright flame lit up the high wall, reflected in the countless fractures of the quartz rock.

An astonished exclamation broke out from both young men: a wide crack gaped in the stone wall!

"That's because the earth was shaking," Xur said.

With one leap, Ung was at the edge of the crack. The aisle was wide enough to let a person through. Unk knew what treacherous traps lurked in the newly shattered rocks. But his impatience was so great that he, without hesitation, squeezed himself into the blackened stone gap in front of him, so narrow that it was possible to move forward with great difficulty. Zur followed the Bull's son. Love for a friend made him forget natural caution.

Soon the passage became so narrow and low that they could barely squeeze between the stones, bent over, almost crawling. The air was hot and stale, it became more and more difficult to breathe ... Suddenly, a sharp ledge of rock blocked their path.

Angered, Oong drew a stone ax from his belt and struck the rocky ledge with such force as if he had an enemy in front of him. The rock shook, and the young men realized that it could be moved. Zur, sticking his torch into the crack in the wall, began to help Un. The rock shook harder. They pushed her with all their might. There was a crack, stones fell down ... The rock swayed and ... they heard the dull sound of a heavy block falling. The path was clear.

After resting a little, the friends moved on. The passage gradually widened. Soon Un and Zur were able to straighten up to their full height, breathing became easier. Finally they found themselves in a vast cave. Ung rushed forward with all his might, but soon the darkness forced him to stop: Zur with his torch could not keep up with his swift friend. But the delay was short. The impatience of the son of the Bull was transferred to the Man-without-shoulders, and they moved on with large steps almost at a run.

Soon a faint light shone ahead. It intensified as the young men approached it. Suddenly Un and Xur were at the mouth of the cave. Before them stretched a narrow corridor formed by two sheer granite walls. Above, high above their heads, a strip of dazzling blue sky could be seen.

“Un and Zur went through the mountain!” - the son of the Bull exclaimed joyfully.

He straightened up to his full mighty height, and pride from the consciousness of the accomplished feat took possession of his whole being.

Zur, more restrained by nature, was also very excited.

Physician and naturalist Georg August Goldfuss, who found the skull of a cave lion in the Franconian Alba.

In Soviet paleontology, at the initiative of Nikolai Vereshchagin, the cave lion was called the tigrolev.

Spreading

In Europe, the first lions appeared about 700,000 years ago and belonged to the subspecies Panthera leo fossilis, the so-called Mosbach lion. That it is sometimes also referred to as the cave lion can be misleading. As a rule, the term cave lion refers to a later subspecies Panthera leo spelaea. Mosbach lions reached a length of up to 2.4 m without taking into account the tail and were half a meter larger than modern lions. They were the size of a liger. From this large subspecies came the cave lion, which appeared about 300,000 years ago. It was distributed throughout northern Eurasia and even during the glaciations penetrated deep into the north. In the northeast of Eurasia, a separate subspecies was formed, the so-called East Siberian cave lion ( ), which reached the American continent through the then existing land connection between Chukotka and Alaska. Spreading south, it developed into the American lion ( panthera leo atrox). The East Siberian cave lion became extinct at the end of the last major glaciation about 10 thousand years ago. The European cave lion died out, probably in the same period, but it is possible that it remained for some time in the Balkan Peninsula. Regarding the lions that existed on it until the beginning of our era, it is not known whether they were cave lions.

Appearance

The skeleton of an adult male cave lion, found in 1985 near the German Siegsdorf, had a height at the withers of 1.20 m and a length of 2.1 m without tail. This corresponds to a very large modern lion. At the same time, the Siegsdorf lion was inferior to many of its relatives. Cave lions were on average 5-10% larger than modern lions, but did not reach the huge size of Mosbach lions and American lions. Rock paintings from the Stone Age allow us to draw some conclusions about the coloring of the coat and mane of the cave lion. Particularly impressive depictions of lions have been found in southern France in the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche department, as well as in the Vogelherdhöhle cave in the Swabian Alb. Ancient drawings of cave lions always show them without a mane, which suggests that, unlike their African or Indian relatives, they either did not have one, or it was not so impressive. Often this image shows the tuft on the tail characteristic of lions. The coloring of the wool, apparently, was one-color.

In Yakutia, a well-preserved corpse of a lion cub at the age of several months was found, as well as two more, slightly worse preserved specimens.

Lifestyle

Relatives

In contrast to the Mosbach lion, regarding the classification of which as Panthera leo fossilis unanimity has always reigned among scientists, there has been a long debate about the cave lion, whether it is a lion, a tiger, or even whether it should be singled out as a separate species. In 2004, German scientists were able to unambiguously identify it using DNA analysis as a subspecies of the lion. Thus ended the dispute that has existed since the first description of this animal in 1810. However, the Pleistocene lions of the north formed their own group, distinct from the lions of Africa and Southeast Asia. To this so-called group Spelaea included the Mosbach lion ( P.l. fossilis), cave lion ( P.l. spelaea), East Siberian lion ( P.l. vereshchagini) and the American lion ( P.l. atrox). All modern subspecies of lions belong to the group Leo. Both groups separated about 600 thousand years ago. Individual fossil specimens of the extinct American lion were larger than the Mosbach lion and thus were among the largest felids that ever existed. Previously, they were considered a separate species, called the giant