Panthera tigris trinilensis
Panthera tigris trinilensis, known as the Trinil tiger, is an extinct tiger subspecies. The Trinil tiger is known from remains dating from nearly 1.2 million years ago, which were found at the locality of Trinil, Java, Indonesia. The fossil remains are now stored in the Dubois Collection of the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, Netherlands. Although these fossils have been found on Java, the Trinil tiger is thought not to be a direct ancestor of the Javan tiger, and likely went extinct ca. 50,000 years ago. Additionally, the Bali tiger, also extinct, was also not closely related to the Trinil tiger due to the different time periods in which they were alive.
| Panthera tigris trinilensis Temporal range: | |
|---|---|
| A fossil found, thought to be of a Trinil tiger | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Feliformia |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Subfamily: | Pantherinae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | |
| Subspecies: | †P. t. trinilensis |
| Trinomial name | |
| †Panthera tigris trinilensis Dubois, 1908 | |
The Trinil tiger lived in Indonesia, notably near Trinil, Java; according to some zoologists, this tiger could be the ancestor of all known Indonesian subspecies, with some speculating that this region of Southeast Asia was a potential epicenter of Pantherinae origin. The oldest tiger fossils found, dated to the early Pleistocene in Java, show that, around two million years ago, tigers were already quite widespread across mainland and insular East Asia. However, the glacial and interglacial climatic variations, among other geological events (notably, Indonesia's location in a highly volcanically active part of the planet) may have caused repeated geographic changes in the area.