Even more remarkably, the amount of modern lion ancestry in cave lions increased during glacial periods and decreased during warmer intervals.
Climate appears to have repeatedly brought the two species together.
Image: Amount of interbreeding was correlated with global ice volume
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Isabelle Feinauer is currently defending their PhD thesis on the genomic consequences of postglacial recolonization of Scandinavian mammals with Morten Tange Olsen as the opponent.
Good luck, Isa!
But despite this deep divergence, cave lions and the ancestors of modern lions occasionally interbred.
Their genomes preserve the signatures of those ancient encounters.
Image: The extinct modern lion population from southwest Asia showed the best evidence for modern <-> cave interbreeding.
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Our results show that cave lions were not just a northern population of modern lions.
They represented a distinct evolutionary lineage that persisted in Eurasia for nearly 2 million years.
Image: A) cave lion samples, B) modern and cave lions were distinct lineages, C) modern lion samples
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Ancient DNA is revealing that many extinct species had much deeper and more complex histories than we once imagined.
The cave lion was the product of nearly 2 million years of independent evolution.
Photo: Skull of cave lion (photo taken by Love Dalén)
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Huge congratulations to lead author David Stanton, as well as all co-authors and collaborators who helped make this study possible!
Photo: The female cave lion cub named Sparta, whose genome was sequenced in this study (photo taken by Love Dalén)
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One surprise: cave lions do not appear to have been in a long-term demographic decline before extinction.
Their effective population size may actually have exceeded that of modern African lions.
Image: Population size changes in lions over time
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We also identified cave-lion-specific genetic changes in genes linked to neurological function, vision and the circulatory system.
Potential clues to how these animals adapted to Ice Age environments.
Image: Functions linked to genetic changes in cave lions
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The cave lion was one of the most successful predators of the Ice Age.
It ranged from Britain to Alaska and is immortalized in spectacular prehistoric cave art.
Picture: European cave lions in Chauvet Cave, museum replica (WikiCommons)
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Meet our keynote speakers 💁♂️
MATTIAS JAKOBSSON (@humanevouu.bsky.social)
Mattias is a leader in employing large-scale genomic datasets to reconstruct the demographic history and evolutionary processes of past human populations.
Check the full conference program👉 icp2026.palaeogenomics.org/program/
