Meet this 5,00,000 years old predator: The real king of the Ice Age before the modern lions ruled
Long before kings wore crowns and lions roared across African savannas, another ruler walked the frozen plains of Ice Age Europe.
Lions, too, had a predecessor. A massive, silent, and powerful king known as the cave lion and it was a true monarch of the mammoth steppe.
These were larger than today's African lion variety, built to survive glacial winds and snow-covered landscapes, and this is not science fiction; some real proof of these ice age beasts has been found in the ancient caves of the icy landscapes of the Earth.
A relic- fossil is kept in this museum
During the ice age, the cave lion ruled over the mammoth steppes as the apex predator; genetic studies confirm it was a distinct species, different from today's African lion, and existed around 5,00,000 years ago.
And a beautifully preserved skull displayed at France's Muséum de Toulouse, a skull from Montmaurin's Grotte de Coupe-Gorge, part of a nearly complete skeleton found in clay bed 3S.
The Toulouse time capsule
Digitally scanned in 2015, the skull was transformed into a 3D reconstruction, letting visitors virtually see the extinct lion in interactive museum exhibits, according to reports by ima-solutions.
A Beast of Epic Proportions
Standing up to 1.2 m at the shoulder and measuring over 2 m in body length, cave lions were larger than most modern lions, though slightly smaller than the earlier Panthera fossilis.
Fossils show they had yellowish-grey coats, thick underfur for icy climates, and crucially, lacked manes, as confirmed by cave art in Lascaux and Chauvet.
These formidable felines hunted giant Ice Age herbivores such as reindeer, bison, and even young mammoths. They often clashed with other carnivores like cave hyenas, wolves, and cave bears, who were all vying for limited resources. Multiple cave paintings also suggest that these predators interacted with humans, dating back thousands of years. Neanderthals and later Upper Paleolithic humans hunted them for meat and pelts, as shown by prehistoric skinning marks and cave paintings
Carvings and paintings found in ancient caves
Ancient carvings and cave paintings of cave lions have been found in the famous Lascaux and Chauvet Caves in France, dating back roughly 15,000 to 17,000 years.
One particularly interesting drawing in the Chauvet cave shows two lions walking side by side. The larger one in the background appears to be male as it is drawn with a visible scrotum but no mane. This kind of detail has led researchers to believe that male cave lions likely didn't have manes at all, or if they did, they were very small, nothing like the thick manes we see on modern African lions.
Mystery of Disappearance
Cave lions vanished around 13,000 to 14,000 years ago. Theories suggest a combination of a warming climate, shrinking open habitats, diminishing prey, increasing competition with wolves, and human hunting pressure. Genetic studies even show a population bottleneck between 47,000–18,000 years ago. Their disappearance is also an indication of the collapse of the mammoth steppe ecosystem.
Photos: Wikimedia commons
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Not only did Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record around this time, Cooper added, but so did other species across the disproportionately affected areas. Mukhopadhyay's group suggested two theories of what helped Homo sapiens, who interbred with Neanderthals, to survive: the use of a primitive kind of sunscreen known as ocher—a naturally occurring pigment composed of iron oxide often used for cave art—to protect their bodies from the sun, and clothing that hugged the body and covered more skin. Right around the time of the Laschamps event, there was an uptick in cave art at sites archaeologists have linked to Homo sapiens, according to Cooper. Anthropologists hypothesize that Homo sapiens also used ocher on their skin based on the fact that populations living in Africa and Australia today apply the pigment as a skin protectant, said Andrew Zipkin, an archaeological scientist affiliated with Arizona State University who wasn't involved in the recent study. Ocher is a naturally occurring pigment often used in cave paintings in what is now Spain. Archaeological sites linked to Neanderthals and modern humans have both yielded stone tools called scrapers used for processing animal hides to make them supple and wearable, Garvey said. But researchers have found evidence of a broader clothing-making tool kit at Homo sapiens-related sites. 'We're also seeing things like needles and awls and the kinds of implements that would be very useful to poke holes in these hides and then stitch them together with sinew in the mass production of tailored clothing,' she added. Anthropologists are careful to note that the coincident timing of the Neanderthal extinction and the Laschamps event could have been mere chance. Differences in population sizes and other things could also have made the species's survival less likely, according to Tony Capra, a University of California, San Francisco evolutionary geneticist who wasn't involved in the work. The goal of the recent work, according to the study authors, was to focus on one aspect of a multifaceted mystery. 'Whoever had the tailored clothing probably did have this advantage,' Garvey said. 'But was it exclusive to one group and was it enough to lead to the extinction of one and the proliferation of the other? These are million-dollar questions.' Write to Aylin Woodward at Did UV Rays Doom Neanderthals?
