An intriguing find of an early Middle Pleistocene European snow leopard, Panthera uncia pyrenaica ssp. nov. (Mammalia, Carnivora, Felidae), from the Arago cave (Tautavel, Pyrénées-Orientales, France)

Abstract

A complete mandible of a leopard-sized cat from the early Middle Pleistocene Arago cave MIS 14 level (Tautavel, France) was at first assigned to the snow leopard, Panthera uncia. A subsequent comprehensive description and analysis found the mandibular corpus snow leopard-like, but interpreted the dentition more like the leopard, Panthera pardus. Thus, this cat was classified as P. pardus. The re-study given in this paper presents the key to its real evolutionary place. The extant snow leopard is characterised by an autapomorphic excessively large dentition, not found in any other Panthera species. The Arago specimen represents the symplesiomorphic small-tooth type. Subtracting this character leaves diagnostic uncertainty, when only looking at the teeth, but provides an unambiguous P. uncia assignment when looking for the unique factor combination of the mandibular corpus. We deal with an ancestral snow leopard who demonstrates that the later large dentition was not yet evolved in the early Middle Pleistocene. An abstract heading in a symposium program book proposed the name Panthera pardus tautavelensis nov. ssp., not available by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Therefore, the Arago snow leopard is named Panthera uncia pyrenaica ssp. nov. A single Panthera uncia record in the Eurasian late Middle Pleistocene from Zhoukoudian Locality 3 (China) perfectly bridges the difference between the Arago cat and the extant snow leopard. The early Middle Pleistocene European history of leopard-sized cats was originally understood as a more or less uniform development within the species P. pardus. This turns out to be a repeated replacement of different species and subspecies, involving Puma pardoides, Panthera pardus and Panthera uncia. It cannot even be excluded that snow leopards returned in each intense cold period of the Middle and Late Pleistocene from their Central Asian home to Europe.