The Largest Lion To Ever Exist Roamed Wyoming

You might assume that the largest cat ever to exist was in Africa.

That is not the case. It was right here in North America and it loved places like Wyoming for its fertile hunting grounds.

The American lion was the largest extinct cat to live in North America during the Pleistocene.

It is estimated to have measured between 5-8 feet in length and nearly 4 feet in height at the shoulder.

It was 25% larger than today's African lion.

Estimates are that it weighed between 500-800 pounds, while some of the largest specimens are estimated to have weighed 1,000 pounds or more.

American palaeontologist Joseph Leidy identified and named the first American lion fossils.

The scientific name Panthera atrox means “fearsome panther” in Latin.

The oldest evidence of the American lion so far has it walking around about 340,000 years ago.

It may have disappeared from the fossil record approximately 11,000 years ago.

Evidence of the lion has been found as far north as southern Alaska, as far south as southern Mexico, as far east as Maryland, and west to California.

It seems that the American lions preferred open habitats such as grasslands and open woodlands, but they may have used caves and rocky overhangs as denning sites. That's what made places like Wyoming a perfect habitat.

Evidence suggests that they fed on a variety of prey including deer, horses, camels, tapirs, bison, and mammoths.

A frozen mummified carcass of an extinct bison from Alaska shows clear claw and bite marks attributed to the American lion.

One theory for their extinction is that they could no longer keep up with the faster prey such as today's pronghorn.