• Question: i love fossils and i love tigers, so what kind fascinating tiger fossils have you found?

    Asked by eletigi232 to Laura on 14 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Laura Soul

      Laura Soul answered on 14 Mar 2013:


      Tigers are quite a new species, the oldest ancestors we have found for them are fossils that are about 2.5 million years old. This might seem very old but in evolution its actually very short. This fossil is from the animal that was the ancestor of all of the big cats, so tigers, lions jaguars and leopards.

      The fossils that have been found of ancient tigers (their scientific name is Panthera tigris) are of their skulls, and hardly any have been found, only 16 in the whole world, I made a map of where they have found them for you if you follow the link below, the yellow dots show where people found them. This is from a website called the paleobiology database where you can find out where they have found any type of fossil.

      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AkToCmUb_G_YVA5p6SqWfpZRlg9725npz2Phqt5phok/edit?usp=sharing

      So I have never been able to find a tiger fossil myself because they are so rare, and they are mostly in China because that is probably where tigers first evolved, and I haven’t ever had a chance to go to China.

      The most fascinating tiger fossils are ones of their skulls and I have used data about where they were found and when they were alive in my research, hopefully I’ll get to go to China or South-East Asia one day and find one for myself! Maybe one day you could too…

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