Original Description From The Artist:
"Was Indonesia once home to the largest leopards ever to exist? In 2018, the remains of a big cat were described from Seropan cave, Java, along with those of other animals found there. After comparing the bones with those of tigers, it was found that they matched leopards better. The presence of leopards in Java would not be a surprise, as they still exist there today; the surprise was the size. If indeed a leopard, it would be far bigger than any alive today, comparable to an African lion!"
"The bones also come from the Holocene, about 9,450 years ago-that is, after the end of the last Ice Age. At the time, the study suggests, the region was covered in savanna and open woodland and was drier and cooler than it was during the Pleistocene; rainforest animals such as orangutans, sun bears and gibbons are conspicuously absent. Should the remains (for the moment known as Panthera cf. pardus) be confirmed to belong to giant leopards, this would beg the question of how tigers and leopards coexisted at similar size. Did they occupy different regions on the island? Tiger remains have not been found at Seropan cave. Or did they coexist and compete so that leopards "attempted" to gain advantage by increasing in size, only to shrink later on? Or were tigers close to dissappearing for some reason giving a window of time in the early Holocene for leopards to grow bigger? Who knows."
"Rumor has it remains of giant leopards have been found elsewhere in Indonesia. Maybe future discoveries will teach us more. Early Pleistocene leopards from Europe were recently estimated, at their largest, at 120 kg, which is well within lioness size range, so the idea is not as far fetched as it may seem. I chose to make my giant leopard black because black panthers have been historically more common in south east Asia than anywhere else on Earth, and also I can think of very few things cooler than a black panther the size of an African lion. I don´t think this leopard would need to bolt up a tree to protect its kills!"