Craniomandibular anatomy of Panthera gombaszoegensis from la Belle-Roche (Liège, Belgium)

All big cats, i.e. the clade Pantherinae, have always attracted attention but the jaguar (Panthera onca) has truly marked the cultural heritage of the whole South American continent. The jaguar is a heavy and powerful animal with the most powerful bite and the strongest canine within extant felines. Often called “European jaguar” or “Eurasian jaguar”, Panthera gombaszoegensis was a medium to large pantherine that went extinct approximately 350,000 years ago and is considered as the ancestor of the extant jaguar. While it was first regarded as singular pantherine species it was quickly reattributed as a subspecies of the living jaguar, Panthera onca. Its taxonomic attribution remains debated as some authors still regard this taxa as a species on its own while others maintain that the differences between P. gombaszoegensis and the living jaguar were not significant. The scarce material of P. gombaszoegensis made it difficult to solve this taxonomic debate as the species was created solely based on isolated teeth by Kretzoi (1938b) and most of the material described is dental material. Nevertheless, some undescribed material of P. gombaszoegensis from “La Belle-Roche” in Belgium could shed a new light on this obscure taxon. The skull ULg-PA-BR-II-81-146 is almost complete and is three dimensionally preserved and we hereby provide the first comparative description of the craniomandibular anatomy of this taxon. This skull also shows that P. gombaszoegensis varies from P. onca in various points such as having less rounded skull, a less marked lambdoidal crest, a slightly more protruding mastoid processes in dorsal view or a ventrally directed jugular process. The skull ULg-PA-BR-II-81-146 is also much larger than any extant jaguar showing a clear size reduction in the jaguar lineage. This suggests that the species P. gombaszoegensis is taxonomically and possibly ecologically distinct from P. onca