''Panthera youngi'' is a

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

species that was described in 1934;

remains of this cat were excavated in a ''

Sinanthropus ''Sinanthropus'' (from Sino-, "China", and anthro-, "man") is an archaic genus in the scientific classification system to which the early hominid fossils of Peking man, Lantian Man, Nanjing Man, and Yuanmou Man were once assigned. All of them hav ...

'' formation in

Choukoutien Zhoukoudian Area () is a town and an area located on the east Fangshan District, Beijing, China. It borders Nanjiao and Fozizhuang Townships to its north, Xiangyang, Chengguan and Yingfeng Subdistricts to its east, Shilou and Hangcunhe Towns to ...

, northeastern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Upper and lower

jaw The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...

s excavated in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Yamaguchi Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Yamaguchi Prefecture has a population of 1,377,631 (1 February 2018) and has a geographic area of 6,112 Square kilometre, km2 (2,359 Square mile, sq mi). Y ...

were also attributed to this species. It is estimated to have lived about 350,000 years ago in the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided by ...

. It was suggested that it was

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...

with ''

Panthera atrox ''Panthera atrox'', better known as the American lion, also called the North American lion, or American cave lion, is an extinct Pantherinae, pantherine cat that lived in North America during the Pleistocene Epoch (geology), epoch and the earl ...

'' and '' P. spelaea'' due to their extensive similarities. Some dental similarities were also noted with the older '' P. fossilis'', however, ''Panthera youngi'' showed more derived features.

References

youngi Prehistoric animals of China youngi Fossil taxa described in 1934 {{paleo-carnivora-stub