Trinil-Tiger

• Java

The Trinil Tiger Panthera tigris trinilensis is an extinct subspecies of tiger (Panthera tigris ). He lived during the Pleistocene on the Indonesian island of Java and belonged to the so-called Trinilfauna. The differences for the same time on the Asian continent spread Panthera tigris acutidens and living today subspecies of tiger are large enough to classify him as an independent fossil subspecies. He's probably not a direct ancestor of the Java tiger, which probably descended from much later immigrated from China animals. Probably the Trinil Tiger was on average slightly smaller than the corresponding in size as the South China tiger Panthera tigris acutidens. Some specimens from Ngandong and Watoealang, however, were very large and reached the dimensions of the Indian tiger.

In contrast to the mainland, the finds of fossil tigers on Java are quite numerous and they include not only those of Eastern China to the best known. The Trinil Tiger was described in 1908 by Eugène Dubois. The type specimen comes from the 1.2- million year old sediments from the area of ​​Trinil. At the same site Dubois had previously discovered the Java man. Today, this specimen is in the Museum of Natural History Naturalis in Leiden. The fossil record of the Tiger on Java Leo Daniel Brongersma treated in detail in 1935 and he introduced him in 1937 under the Fauna of Djamboe and Sibrambang cave on Sumatra fixed. 1971 Helmut Hemmer devoted to the fossil record of the Tiger on Java.