Sri Lanka lion

Sri Lanka lion
Conservation status
Extinct (c. 37,000 years BC.) (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Genus:	Panthera
Species:	P. leo
Subspecies:	P. l. sinhaleyus
Trinomial name
Panthera leo sinhaleyus

The Sri Lanka lion (Panthera leo sinhaleyus), also known as the Ceylon lion, was a prehistoric subspecies of lion, endemic to Sri Lanka. It appears to have become extinct prior to the arrival of culturally modern humans, c. 37,000 years BC.

This lion is only known from two teeth found in deposits at Kuruwita. Based on these teeth, P. Deraniyagala erected this subspecies in 1939. However, there is insufficient information to determine how it might differ from other subspecies of lion. Deraniyagala did not explain explicitly how he diagnosed the holotype of this subspecies as belonging to a lion, though he justified its allocation to a distinct subspecies of lion by its being "narrower and more elongate" than those of recent lions in the British Natural History Museum collection.

See also

• Asiatic lion
• Eurasian cave lion

References

• Kelum Manamendra-Arachchi, Rohan Pethiyagoda, Rajith Dissanayake, Madhava Meegaskumbura. 2005. A second extinct big cat from the late Quaternary of Sri Lanka. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. Supplement No. 12: 423–434. National University of Singapore. Online pdf