Snow Leopards and the Pleistocene

[Neal Robbins]

The snow leopard is a cat that lives in mountainous and hilly areas of northern India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, and Central Asia. This cat weighs up to 75 kg. It has gray and white fur and numerous spots. The tail is striped. Snow leopards have tails that are proportionately longer than those of other cats. These long tails can be used for balance while walking in mountainous terrain. The snow leopard can also use the tail to cover its mouth and nose while resting when the weather is very cold.

Dr. Joseph Fox states some key points about the snow leopard in this excerpt of the taxonomy section of an article titled The Snow Leopard:
Taxonomically the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is considered a member of the Felidae subfamily Pantherinae (Blomqvist 1978), Novak and Paradiso 1983). However, on the basis of morphology and behavior, some authors place it in a separate genus, with the name Uncia uncia (Pocock 1917, Peters 1980), (Rieger 1980b, Hemmer 1967, 1972, Anonymous 1987c). As in other Pantherinae, the diploid chromosome number in snow leopards is 38 and the fundamental number is 36. There are 17 metacentric and 2 acrocentric chromosomes (Soderlund et al. 1980). The karyotypic banding pattern is almost identical to that in other Pantherinae (Gripenberg et al. 1982).

[Note - Diploid chromosomes are chromosomes in a somatic cell. A somatic cell is a cell in an organism. A metacentric chromosome has its centromere in the middle. The centromere is a very constricted and condensed part of a chromosome. The spindle fiber is attached to it during mitosis. An acrocentric chromosome has its centromere near one end. Thus one of the chromosomal arms is long and the other is short.]

Dr. Fox goes on to mention that the fossil record of the snow leopard is sparse. Some snow leopard fossils have been found in the Altai caves of Central Asia. These fossils date to the Upper Pleistocene. The evidence indicates that snow leopards did not migrate to continents outside of Asia. They apparently originated during the Pleistocene.

Neal Robbins

P.S. Dr. Fox has a PhD. in forest resources and wildlife management, which he received from the University of Washington in 1983.