Barbary lion
| Barbary lion | |
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| A male Barbary lion photographed in Algeria by Alfred Edward Pease in 1893. | |
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| Lioness and cubs, New York Zoo, 1903. | |
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Extinct in the wild
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | P. leo |
| Subspecies: | P. l. leo |
| Trinomial name | |
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Panthera leo leo (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Panthera leo barbaricus (Meyer, 1826) |
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Panthera leo barbaricus (Meyer, 1826)
The Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo), also known as the Atlas lion or Nubian lion, is a lion subspecies formerly native to North Africa, including the Atlas Mountains, that is now considered extinct in the wild.Pease referred to the Barbary lion as the North African lion, and accounted that the population has been diminished since the mid-19th century following the diffusion of firearms and bounties for shooting them. The last recorded shooting of a wild Barbary lion took place in Morocco in 1942 near Tizi n'Tichka. Small groups of Barbary lions may have survived in Algeria until the early 1960s and in Morocco until the mid-1960s.
A lion from Constantine, Algeria was considered the type specimen of the specific name Felis leo used by Linnaeus in 1758. The Barbary lion was first described by the Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer under the trinomen Felis leo barbaricus on the basis of a type specimen from the Barbary Coast.
While the historical Barbary lion was morphologically distinct, its genetic uniqueness remains questionable, and the taxonomic status of surviving lions frequently considered as Barbary lions, including those that originated from the collection of the King of Morocco, is still unclear.
In a comprehensive study about the evolution of lions, 357 samples of 11 lion populations were examined, including some hybrid lions. The hybrids were descended from Southern African lions (Panthera leo bleyenberghi or Panthera leo krugeri) captured in Angola and Zimbabwe, and apparently Central or West African lions. Results indicate that four "Atlas" lions from Morocco did not exhibit any unique genetic characteristics. The Moroccan cats shared mitochondrial haplotypes (H5 and H6) with the Central-West African lions, and together with them were part of a major mtDNA grouping (lineage III) that also included Asiatic samples. According to the authors, this scenario was in line with their theories on lion evolution. They conclude that lineage III developed in East Africa, and then traveled north and west in the first wave of lion expansions out of the region some 118,000 years ago. It apparently broke up into haplotypes H5 and H6 within Africa, and then into H7 and H8 in Western Asia.
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Wikipedia