Not a jaguar after all: affinities and morphology of Panthera gombaszoegensis

Panthera gombaszoegensis is a fossil pantherine from the Pleistocene of Eurasia. Due to dental similarities with the jaguar (Panthera onca), it was considered to be the closest ancestor to the modern jaguar and was even sometimes considered as a subspecies of jaguar. Our knowledge of this taxa is, however, limited by the scarcity of cranial remains, which has made it difficult to properly assess the phylogenetic affinities and possible ecological role of this taxon. We describe a new cranium from Belgium and computed morphometric analyses on the cranium and dentition of extinct and extant pantherines. While the lower dentition of P. gombaszoegensis is indeed similar to that of P. onca, those similarities are not recovered on other parts of the skull. Some cranial traits of P. gombaszoegensis resemble those of other pantherines, especially larger species such as the tiger P. tigris. Some similarities with generalist taxa such as P. tigris, P. leo or P. pardus in the skull of P. gombaszoegensis suggest a generalist diet, adapted to a wide prey spectrum. The first ever phylogenetic assessment of the phylogenetic position P. gombaszoegensis places this taxon closer to P. tigris than to P. onca, which considerably simplifies the biogeographic history of pantherines