Felis Atrox

The next creature discussed will be an animal from the Cenozoic Era and a different possible name for this blog. This animal is known by me as Felis Atrox, or the American Lion. Yes, there were lions in America, they are extinct now, and you don’t see lions in America anymore except for at the zoo. These lions were not as large as the African lions, they were 4/3 larger than modern lions and also had longer legs. For those of you look at this later on Wikipedia, you see the lion there does not have a mane, these lions do have manes. If you check for “Felis Atrox” on Google, you will not get as many results as you might expect. This is because I heard about them from an outdated book and only found out the current name a few years ago. This is also true for two other animals in the Cenozoic Era. Regardless of it now being Panthera Leo Atrox, it will always be Felis Atrox to me. They probably did this because lions are considered as Panthera and not Felis. It is estimated that the American Lion lived from Alaska to Peru, but was absent from Eastern North America, East of the Mississippi River. However, they could possibly have been living around Lake Michigan. They probably preyed on deer, horses, apparently there used to be horses in North America too, American Bison, Mammoths, Camels, and other larger herbivores. Atrox means “cruel,” but I did not know this when I found out about it, so I like it anyway. There are not as many of these lions in the tar pits, apparently because they either were smart enough to know that the pits were a black, gooey death trap, or they just didn’t rely on using the tar pits to catch prey. All in all, Felis Atrox is great, but I’m somewhat glad they’re extinct, especially for those who live West of the Mississippi River.