Pantherinae is a subfamily within the family

Felidae Felidae () is the family of mammals in the order Carnivora colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid (). The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the dom ...

; it was named and first described by

Reginald Innes Pocock Reginald Innes Pocock Fellow of the Royal Society, F.R.S. (4 March 1863 – 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist. Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock (historian), Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He ...

in 1917 as only including the ''

Panthera ''Panthera'' is a genus within the family Felidae that was named and described by Lorenz Oken in 1816 who placed all the spotted cats in this group. Reginald Innes Pocock revised the classification of this genus in 1916 as comprising the tig ...

'' species. The Pantherinae genetically diverged from a

common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. All living beings are in fact descendants of a unique ancestor commonly referred to as the last universal comm ...

between and .

Characteristics

Pantherinae species are characterised by an imperfectly ossified

hyoid bone The hyoid bone (lingual bone or tongue-bone) () is a horseshoe-shaped bone situated in the anterior midline of the neck between the chin and the thyroid cartilage. At rest, it lies between the base of the mandible and the third cervical verteb ...

with elastic

tendon A tendon or sinew is a tough, high-tensile-strength band of dense fibrous connective tissue that connects muscle to bone. It is able to transmit the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system without sacrificing its ability ...

s that enable their

larynx The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal inlet is about ...

to be mobile. They have a flat

rhinarium The rhinarium (New Latin, "belonging to the nose"; plural: rhinaria) is the furless skin surface surrounding the external openings of the nostrils in many mammals. Commonly it is referred to as the tip of the ''snout'', and breeders of cats and ...

that only barely reaches the

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage * Dorsal c ...

side of the nose. The area between the nostrils is narrow, and not extended sidewards as in the

Felinae The Felinae are a subfamily of the family Felidae. This subfamily comprises the small cats having a bony hyoid, because of which they are able to purr but not roar. Other authors have proposed an alternative definition for this subfamily: a ...

. The ''

'' species have a single, rounded, vocal fold with a thick

mucosal A mucous membrane or mucosa is a membrane that lines various cavities in the body of an organism and covers the surface of internal organs. It consists of one or more layers of epithelial cells overlying a layer of loose connective tissue. It ...

lining, a large vocalis muscle, and a large

cricothyroid muscle The cricothyroid muscle is the only tensor muscle of the larynx aiding with phonation. It is innervated by the superior laryngeal nerve. Its action tilts the thyroid forward to help tense the vocal cords. Structure The cricothyroid muscle ...

with long and narrow membranes. A vocal fold that is longer than enables all but the snow leopard among them to roar, as it has shorter vocal folds of that provide a lower resistance to airflow; this distinction was one reason it was proposed to be retained in the genus ''Uncia''.

Classification

Pocock originally defined the Pantherinae as comprising the

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

'' and ''Uncia''. Today, ''Uncia'' has been subsumed to ''Panthera'', and the genus ''

Neofelis ''Neofelis'' is a genus comprising two extant cat species in Southeast Asia: the clouded leopard (''Neofelis nebulosa'') of mainland Asia, and the Sunda clouded leopard (''Neofelis diardi'') of Sumatra and Borneo The scientific name ''Neofel ...

'' is also included.

Living genera

The following table shows the

extant taxa Neontology is a part of biology that, in contrast to paleontology, deals with living (or, more generally, ''recent'') organisms. It is the study of extant taxa (singular: extant taxon): taxa (such as species, genera and families) with members st ...

within the Pantherinae, grouped according to the traditional

phenotypical In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological prop ...

classification. Estimated

genetic divergence Genetic divergence is the process in which two or more populations of an ancestral species accumulate independent genetic changes ( mutations) through time, often leading to reproductive isolation and continued mutation even after the populations ha ...

times of the

genotypical The genotype of an organism is its complete set of genetic material. Genotype can also be used to refer to the alleles or variants an individual carries in a particular gene or genetic location. The number of alleles an individual can have in a ...

pantherine lineage are indicated in

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago ...

(mya), based on analysis of

autosomal An autosome is any chromosome that is not a sex chromosome. The members of an autosome pair in a diploid cell have the same morphology, unlike those in allosomal (sex chromosome) pairs, which may have different structures. The DNA in autosom ...

, xDNA, yDNA and

mtDNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA ...

gene segments; and estimates based on analysis of biparental

nuclear genome Nuclear DNA (nDNA), or nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid, is the DNA contained within each cell nucleus of a eukaryotic organism. It encodes for the majority of the genome in eukaryotes, with mitochondrial DNA and plastid DNA coding for the rest. I ...

Evolution

The Felidae originated in Central Asia in the

Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million years ago) to 5.333 Ma. The ...

; the subfamily Pantherinae diverged from the Felidae between and . Several

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

''Panthera'' species were described: *'' Panthera blytheae'' is the oldest known species that possibly lived about . *''

Panthera palaeosinensis ''Panthera palaeosinensis'' was an early Pleistocene species from northern China. It is often incorrectly referenced as the ancestor of the tiger, ''Panthera tigris'', although it shares features with all living large cats. Recent studies place ...

'' lived in the

early Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently estimated to span the time ...

around two to three million years ago in northern

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...

. *''

Panthera zdanskyi ''Panthera zdanskyi'', also known as the Longdan tiger, is an extinct pantherine species that is seen as a close relative of the modern tiger. Fossils were excavated in northwestern China's Gansu province. Etymology ''Panthera zdanskyi'' was fi ...

'' is dated to . *''

Panthera gombaszoegensis ''Panthera gombaszoegensis'', also known as the European jaguar, is a ''Panthera'' species that lived from about 2.0 to 0.35 million years ago in Europe. The first fossils were excavated in 1938 in Gombasek, Slovakia. More of its fossil remai ...

'' lived from about in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. *''

Panthera youngi ''Panthera youngi'' is a fossil cat species that was described in 1934; fossil remains of this cat were excavated in a ''Sinanthropus'' formation in Choukoutien, northeastern China. Upper and lower jaws excavated in Japan's Yamaguchi Prefecture ...

'' lived in the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

about in China. *''

Panthera spelaea ''Panthera spelaea'', also known as the Eurasian cave lion, European cave lion or steppe lion, is an extinct ''Panthera'' species that most likely evolved in Europe after the third Cromerian interglacial stage, less than 600,000 years ago. Phylo ...

'' lived in Europe after the third

Cromerian interglacial The Cromerian Stage or Cromerian Complex, also called the Cromerian (german: Cromerium), is a stage in the Pleistocene glacial history of north-western Europe, mostly occurring more than half a million years ago. It is named after the East Anglian t ...

stage from about 450,000 to 14,000 years ago. *''

Panthera atrox ''Panthera atrox'', better known as the American lion, also called the North American lion, or American cave lion, is an extinct pantherine cat that lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch and the early Holocene epoch, about 340, ...

'' lived in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

during the Pleistocene and

early Holocene In the geologic time scale, the Greenlandian is the earliest age or lowest stage of the Holocene Epoch or Series, part of the Quaternary. Beginning in 11,650 BP (9701 BCE or 300 HE) and ending 8,276 BP (6237 BCE or 3764 HE), it is the earlie ...

about 340,000 to 11,000 years ago. *'' Panthera shawi'' was a lion-like cat in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

that possibly lived in the early Pleistocene. *'' Panthera balamoides'' lived in the Yucatan Peninsula in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

, during the Pleistocene. There is evidence of distinct markers for the mitochondrial genome for Felidae. Results of a DNA-based study indicate that the tiger (''Panthera tigris'') branched off first, followed by the jaguar (''P. onca''), the lion (''P. leo''), then the leopard (''P. pardus'') and snow leopard (''P. uncia''). ''Felis pamiri'', formerly referred to as ''

Metailurus ''Metailurus'' is a genus of saber-toothed cat in the family Felidae, and belonging to the tribe Metailurini, which occurred in North America, Eurasia and Africa from the Miocene to the Middle Pleistocene. This genus was formally described by O. ...

'', is now considered a probable relative of

extant Extant is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Extant taxon, a taxon which is not extinct, ...

Pantherinae.

References

External links