Researchers at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan have recently discovered fossils of an extinct branch species of tiger that are more than 43,500 years old.
A team of scientists in China used DNA analysis of a fossil found in northeast China to identify what they believe is a lineage of tigers that diverged from today’s modern felines approximately 268,000 years ago. The proposed evolutionary split would have happened far earlier than the previously known divergence around 125,000 years ago when what would become South China.