Japan’s Ancient Big Cats Weren't Tigers, So What Were They?

New DNA analysis of big cat fossils found in Japan has altered what palaeontologists thought about the distribution of large felines during the Late Pleistocene (129,000–11,700 years ago).

While no big cats live in Japan today, evidence of large felids across the Japanese archipelago was discovered throughout the 20th century. It was originally believed that these bones belonged to an ancient Japanese tiger.

Genetic analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the fossils in fact belonged to extinct cave lions.

“Lions and tigers were widespread apex predators during the Late Pleistocene and integral components of East Asian megafauna,” the authors write in their statement of the significance of the study. “Cave lions predominantly inhabited northern Eurasia, whereas tigers were distributed farther south.”

The boundary between lions and tigers, called the “lion-tiger transition belt”, stretched across Eurasia from the Middle East in the west and the Russian far east.