Barbary lion

The Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo), also known as the Atlas lion, was an African lion population native to North Africa, including the Atlas Mountains, that is now considered extinct in the wild.Pease referred to the Barbary lion as the North African lion, and accounted that the population has been diminished since the mid-19th century following the introduction of firearms and bounties for shooting them. The last recorded shooting of a wild Barbary lion took place in Morocco in 1942 near Tizi n'Tichka. Small groups of Barbary lions may have survived in Algeria until the early 1960s and in Morocco until the mid-1960s.

A lion from Constantine, Algeria was considered the type specimen of the specific name Felis leo used by Linnaeus in 1758. The Barbary lion was first described by the Austrian zoologist Johann Nepomuk Meyer under the trinomen Felis leo barbaricus on the basis of a type specimen from Barbary.

Characteristics

The Barbary lion was long considered one of the biggest lion subspecies, or even the largest of lions and African felidae. Museum specimens of male Barbary lion were described as having very dark and long-haired manes that extended over the shoulder and to the belly. Head-to-tail length of stuffed males varies from 2.35 to 2.8 m (7 ft 9 in to 9 ft 2 in), and females measure around 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in). A 19th-century hunter described a large male allegedly measuring 3.25 m (10.7 ft) including a 75 cm (30 in) long tail. In some historic accounts the weight of wild males was indicated as very heavy and reaching 270 to 300 kilograms (600 to 660 lb). But the accuracy of the measurements may be questionable, and the sample size of captive Barbary lions were too small to conclude they were the biggest lion subspecies.