Concept
The Barbary lion, also called the North African lion, Atlas lion, and Egyptian lion, is an extinct population of the lion subspecies Panthera leo leo. It lived in the mountains and deserts of the Maghreb of North Africa from Morocco to Egypt. It was eradicated following the spread of firearms and bounties for shooting lions. A comprehensive review of hunting and sighting records revealed that small groups of lions may have survived in Algeria until the early 1960s, and in Morocco until the mid-1960s. Today, it is locally extinct in this region. Fossils of the Barbary lion dating to between 100,000 and 110,000 years were found in the cave of Bizmoune, near Essaouira. Until 2017, the Barbary lion was considered a distinct lion subspecies. Results of morphological and genetic analyses of lion samples from North Africa showed that Barbary lions do not differ significantly from the Asiatic lion and fall into the same subclade. This North African/Asian subclade is closely related to lions from West Africa and northern parts of Central Africa and therefore grouped into the Northern lion subspecies Panthera leo leo. Barbary lion zoological specimens range in colour from light to dark tawny. Male lion skins had manes of varying colouration and length. Head-to-tail length of stuffed males in zoological collections varies from , and of females around . Skull size varied from . Some manes extended over the shoulder and under the belly to the elbows. The mane hair was long. In 19th-century hunter accounts, the Barbary lion was claimed to be the largest lion, with a weight of wild males ranging from . Yet, the accuracy of such data measured in the field is questionable. Captive Barbary lions were much smaller but kept under such poor conditions that they might not have attained their full potential size and weight. The colour and size of lions' manes was long thought to be a sufficiently distinct morphological characteristic to accord a subspecific status to lion populations.
