Yang's Tiger, a native lion in China, is called tiger because of a Chinese habit. When the paleontological community in my country names ancient feline animals, they often call large animals tiger, and call them tigers. Small animals are called cats. When the fossil of the front mandible of Tiger Yang's was unearthed, paleontologist Pei Wen called it a tiger based on the size of the fossil.
Tiger Yang was discovered in 1934 at the Zhoukoudian site in Beijing, but what was found was only a fossil of the front segment of the mandible. However, paleontologists used this fossil study to describe Tiger Tiger characteristics. Through the characteristics, it was found that Yang's tiger looks more like a lion in appearance, except that its lower canine teeth are long, which is consistent with the characteristics of a tiger. In the end, paleontologists temporarily classified Yang's tiger as a unique genus of leopard. species.
Later, after many paleontologists studied Yang’s tiger, they found that Yang’s tiger was more consistent with the lion species, so everyone held a meeting and discussed and unanimously agreed that Yang’s tiger was a lion species. In modern times, paleontologists have learned more about Yang's tiger through research and found that Yang's tiger is very likely to be a native lion in ancient China. And when the public generally agreed that Yang's tiger was a kind of lion, the name Yang's tiger did not change, because the paleontological community will not easily change the name of any species when it was discovered.
Through research, paleontologists believe that Yang's tiger lived at least 350,000 years ago, when lions had migrated from the origin of life in Africa to China. Tigers appeared in China in the early Pleistocene 2 million years ago. Lions only began to slowly migrate to Asia 1.2 million years ago, much later than tigers. The study found that Young's tiger was much smaller than the fossil lion and about the same size as modern tigers and lions. Although Yang's tiger is classified as a lion, it is not a maned lion. Many paleontologists believe that Yang's tiger is an East Asian branch of the fossil lion.