Not a jaguar after all? Phylogenetic affinities and morphology of the Pleistocene felid Panthera gombaszoegensis

Abstract

Panthera gombaszoegensis is a fossil pantherine from the Pleistocene of Eurasia. It has been considered to be the closest ancestor the jaguar (Panthera onca) due to dental similarities, and has even sometimes been considered to be a subspecies of jaguar. However, our knowledge of this taxon is limited by the scarcity of cranial remains, which has made it difficult to properly assess the phylogenetic affinities and possible ecological role of this taxon. Here, we describe a new cranium of P. gombaszoegensis from Belgium, and present a morphometric analysis of the cranium and dentition of extinct and extant pantherines. Whereas the lower dentition of P. gombaszoegensis is similar to that of P. onca, similarities were not recovered in other parts of the skull. Some cranial traits of P. gombaszoegensis resemble those of other pantherines, especially larger species such as the tiger (P. tigris). Some similarities with taxa such as tigers (P. tigris), lions (P. leo), and leopards (P. pardus) in the skull of P. gombaszoegensis, suggesting a diet adapted to a wide prey spectrum. The first ever assessment of the phylogenetic placement of P. gombaszoegensis places this taxon closer to P. tigris than to P. onca, which considerably simplifies the biogeographic history of pantherines.

Evolutionary Patterns of Cat-Like Carnivorans Unveils Drivers of the Sabertoothed Morphology

“…Twenty nine taxa were absent from the sampled trees and had to be manually added in positions found in the literature: Yoshi minor, Yoshi garevskii, Amphimachairodus palanderi, Nimravides pediomonus Nimravides thinobastes, Machairodus catacopis, Smilodon gracilis, Pseudaelurus stouti, Pseudaelurus intrepidus, Pseudaelurus marshi, Pseudaelurus skineri, Pseudaelurus pedionomus, Pseudaelurus validus, Acinonyx pardinensis, Catopuma temminckii, Felis sylvestris, Leopardus pajeros, Leopardus wideii, Leptailurus serval, Miracinonyx studeri, Miracinonyx inexpectatus, Panthera atrox, Panthera speleae, Panthera paleosinensis, Panthera gombaszoegensis, Puma yaguarondi, Panthera uncia, and Puma pardoides. 87,[90][91][92][93][94] We time-scaled the resulting supertree using the 'timePaleoPhy' function from the Paleotree package 95 through the minimum branch length (mbl) method. Divergence between Felidae and Nimravidae was set based on the results published by Barrett et al 96 We generated the time tree using the 'geoscalePhylo' function from the paleotree package 95 with first and last occurrence dates obtained from the literature 79,86,87,90,91,97,98…”

“…87,[90][91][92][93][94] We time-scaled the resulting supertree using the 'timePaleoPhy' function from the Paleotree package 95 through the minimum branch length (mbl) method. Divergence between Felidae and Nimravidae was set based on the results published by Barrett et al 96 We generated the time tree using the 'geoscalePhylo' function from the paleotree package 95 with first and last occurrence dates obtained from the literature 79,86,87,90,91,97,98…”