LAST OF THE LAST: Steppe Lion Extinction in Europe

For some historians well-versed in certain events, few things are as intriguing as the possibility of different outcomes to factual, known occurrences--“alternative history”.

- Mark Hallett

This “what if ” factor, and the scenarios based on it, has of course long been a staple of popular literature and films. On chilly nights over a whisky, paleontologists, too, have sometimes let their minds wander into these realms, in part because of their love for the vanished creatures on which their research and studies focus. If the asteroid hadn’t struck the earth, would engravings of upright, sentient dinosaurs parade across Egyptian tomb walls, and would the Sphinx have a theropod’s head? If modern humans hadn’t left Africa, would Neanderthals have one day sailed to populate the New World?

For myself, I sometimes like to entertain a more humble fantasy: that if circumstances had been different, we might have several long-extinct animals, like mammoths, ground sloths and steppe lions, still with us. In researching the changes leading up to the decline of steppe lions for the chapter, “Aftermath of an Ice Age” in my and my coauthor John Harris’s book, On the Prowl: In Search of Big Cat Origins, I was intrigued by the research and findings of various workers into the possibility of late-surviving populations of the Eurasian steppe lion,