Panthera tigris soloensis


Panthera tigris soloensis or Panthera sondaica, known as the "Ngandong tiger", is an extinct subspecies of the modern tiger species. It inhabited the Sundaland region of Indonesia during the Pleistocene epoch.

Discoveries

s of the Ngandong tiger were excavated primarily near the village of Ngandong, hence the common name. Only seven fossils are known, making study of the animal difficult.

Description

The few remains of the Ngandong tiger suggest that it would have been about the size of a modern Bengal tiger. However, given the size of other remains, it may have been larger than a modern tiger. Heltler and Volmer estimated that a large male could have weighed up to, in which case, it would have been heavier than the largest extant tiger subspecies, and similar in size to Smilodon populator and Panthera atrox, rendering it, along with these two other cats, among the largest felids ever known to have lived.

Paleoecology

In addition to the remains of the Ngandong tiger, many other fossils from the same era have been discovered in Ngandong, like the proboscideans Stegodon trigonocephalus and Elephas hysudrindicus, the bovines Bubalus palaeokerabau and Bos paleosondaicus, the extant perissodactyls Tapirus indicus and Rhinoceros sondaicus, and a great variety of cervine species. Homo erectus fossils are also known from the area.