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The Sri Lanka Lion (Panthera leo sinhaleyus), also known as the Ceylon Lion, was a prehistoric subspecies
Subspecies

In biology, subspecies is the taxonomic rank immediately subordinate to a species. A subspecies is a taxonomic group which is less distinct than the Common descent or species from which it originates....
 of lion
Lion

The lion is a member of the family Felidae and one of four big cats in the genus Panthera. With exceptionally large males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger....
, endemic to Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
. It appears to have become extinct prior to the arrival of culturally modern humans, c.
Circa

Circa means "in approximately", generally referring to a year. It is widely used in genealogy and historical writing, when the dates of events are approximately known....
 37,000 years BC.

This lion is only known from two teeth found in depostits at Kuruwita
Kuruwita

Kuruwita is a town in Sabaragamuwa Province of Sri Lanka. Its 120 km away from Colombo. It is the one of town of the Ratnapura District which is one of the two districts belonging to Sabaragamuwa Province ....
. Based on these teeth, P. Deraniyagala
Paul E. P. Deraniyagala

Dr. Paules Edward Pieris Deraniyagala was a paleontologist, zoologist, and also an artist from Sri Lanka. He specialised in fauna and human fossils of the Indian subcontinent....
 erected this subspecies in 1939. However, there is insufficient information to determine how it might differ from other subspecies of lion.






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The Sri Lanka Lion (Panthera leo sinhaleyus), also known as the Ceylon Lion, was a prehistoric subspecies
Subspecies

In biology, subspecies is the taxonomic rank immediately subordinate to a species. A subspecies is a taxonomic group which is less distinct than the Common descent or species from which it originates....
 of lion
Lion

The lion is a member of the family Felidae and one of four big cats in the genus Panthera. With exceptionally large males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger....
, endemic to Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India....
. It appears to have become extinct prior to the arrival of culturally modern humans, c.
Circa

Circa means "in approximately", generally referring to a year. It is widely used in genealogy and historical writing, when the dates of events are approximately known....
 37,000 years BC.

This lion is only known from two teeth found in depostits at Kuruwita
Kuruwita

Kuruwita is a town in Sabaragamuwa Province of Sri Lanka. Its 120 km away from Colombo. It is the one of town of the Ratnapura District which is one of the two districts belonging to Sabaragamuwa Province ....
. Based on these teeth, P. Deraniyagala
Paul E. P. Deraniyagala

Dr. Paules Edward Pieris Deraniyagala was a paleontologist, zoologist, and also an artist from Sri Lanka. He specialised in fauna and human fossils of the Indian subcontinent....
 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
Holotype

A holotype is one of several possible biological types. A type is what fixes a name to a taxon. A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described....
 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
Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
 collection.

See also

  • Eurasian cave lion
    Cave lion

    The cave lion also known as the European or Eurasian cave lion, is an extinct subspecies of lion known from fossils and multiple examples of prehistoric art....
  • Asiatic lion
    Asiatic Lion

    The Asiatic Lion is a subspecies of the lion which survives today only in India where it is also known as the Indian lion. They once ranged from the Mediterranean to India, covering most of Southwest Asia, and hence it is also known as the Persian lion....