Between 73,000 and 20,000 years in the past (Late Pleistocene), the Japanese Archipelago was inhabited by cave lions (Panthera spelaea), in response to a brand new genetic and proteomic evaluation of fossilized felid stays beforehand attributed to tigers (Panthera tigris).
Cave lions painted within the Chauvet Cave, France.
Lions and tigers have been widespread apex predators through the Late Pleistocene and integral elements of East Asian megafauna.
Cave lions predominantly inhabited northern Eurasia, whereas tigers have been distributed farther south.
“As dominant apex predators, lions and tigers probably formed the evolutionary pathways of different sympatric carnivores by means of each direct and oblique competitors, and influenced herbivore populations by means of predation, since they emerged roughly two million years in the past,” mentioned Peking College researcher Shu-Jin Luo and colleagues.
“Later, lions and tigers could have change into vital rivals to 1 one other, when lions dispersed out of Africa round a million years in the past and started increasing their vary throughout Eurasia.”
“Right now, nonetheless, their geographic ranges not overlap, resulting from in depth contractions that occurred throughout southwest Eurasia by the early twentieth century, pushed by anthropogenic actions. The closest present populations at the moment are greater than 300 km aside in India.”
“In distinction, through the Late Pleistocene, vary overlap and interactions between lions and tigers could have occurred extra ceaselessly alongside a transition zone — named the lion-tiger transition belt — stretching throughout Eurasia, from the Center East by means of Central Asia to the Far East,” they mentioned.
“On the easternmost fringe of this zone, the Japanese Archipelago has lengthy been thought of a Late Pleistocene tiger refugium, supported by giant felid subfossils historically attributed to tigers, although their taxonomic id remained unresolved.”
To make clear the origin and evolutionary historical past of Japan’s Pleistocene felids, the researchers reexamined 26 subfossil stays recovered from a number of websites throughout the Japanese Archipelago.
“Utilizing mitochondrial and nuclear genome hybridization seize and sequencing, paleoproteomics, Bayesian molecular courting, and radiocarbon courting, we discovered that every one historic Japanese ‘tiger’ stays yielding molecular knowledge have been, unexpectedly, cave lions,” they mentioned.
Regardless of extraordinarily low endogenous DNA content material in most specimens, the scientists have been capable of get well 5 practically full mitochondrial genomes and one partial nuclear genome.
Their phylogenetic evaluation confirmed that the Japanese specimens fashioned a well-supported monophyletic group nested throughout the Late Pleistocene cave lion lineage referred to as spelaea-1.
A nuclear genome evaluation of the best-preserved specimen confirmed this outcome, separating lion lineages from tigers.
A paleoproteomic evaluation additional recognized a diagnostic amino acid variant in alpha-2-HS-glycoprotein that matched lions relatively than tigers.
In keeping with the workforce, cave lions dispersed to the Japanese Archipelago between about 72,700 and 37,500 years in the past, when a land bridge linked northern Japan to the mainland through the Final Glacial interval.
The animals reached even the southwestern areas of the archipelago, regardless of habitats beforehand thought to favor tigers.
They coexisted with wolves, brown bears, Asian black bears, and early human populations, forming an integral a part of the Late Pleistocene ecosystem of the archipelago.
The authors recommend that the spelaea-1 cave lions continued within the Japanese Archipelago for no less than 20,000 years after their extinction in Eurasia, and probably greater than 10,000 years after their ultimate disappearance from jap Beringia.
“Future reexamination of lion and tiger subfossil stays throughout mid-latitude Eurasia might be important for clarifying species vary dynamics and resolving the oscillations of the lion-tiger belt,” they concluded.
The study was revealed January 26, 2026 within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
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Xin Solar et al. 2026. The Japanese Archipelago sheltered cave lions, not tigers, through the Late Pleistocene. PNAS 123 (6): e2523901123; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2523901123
