The American Lion or, as his scientific name goes, the "Horrific Lion" (Panthera Leo Atrox) was every bit as fearsome a predator as his modern African cousin whom he resembled almost down to the finest detail - the only differences being that the male American Lions did not sport a mane and that Panthera Leo Atrox was, on average, one and a half times as big as the biggest modern African Lion; big enough to bring down animals the African Lion could not even DREAM of hunting: While the latter tends to give most of the present African megafauna a wide berth - Elephants and Rhinos are off limits to all but a few highly specialized lion populations - their glacial precursor has been proven to kill and devour mammoths and mastodons as well as Wooly Rhinos and Giant Ground Sloths with great regularity. A predator that clocked in at 600 pounds simply could not help but prey on giant herbivores because otherwise it simply would not have been able to maintain its massive frame.
