[AnotherUnixGeek]

They had cave lions 3 times the size of African lions back then.

Interesting - were these direct ancestors of today's lions or, like saber-toothed "tigers", were they more distantly related members of the cat family that happen to share a name with the modern version?

I'm still not clear on why land mammal sizes seem to have shrunk (cave bear, dire wolf, giant sloth, Imperial mammoth, Baluchitherium to more modest sizes today).

[Defiant]

They were real lions, they just got bigger in the northern grasslands, where huge wooley rhinos, mammoths and humongous deer grew big on the abundance of food, and that in turn led to larger predators.

There were lions in Europe into Roman times. In Alexander the Great's time, they used to hunt them. They weren't the huge kind any more, though.

[Doodle]

I'm still not clear on why land mammal sizes seem to have shrunk (cave bear, dire wolf, giant sloth, Imperial mammoth, Baluchitherium to more modest sizes today).

Because we nasty humans killed them off.

[SunkenCiv]

Cave Lion (and cave bear, among other things):

http://archserve.id.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Pleistocene/6_Bestiary.html#Cave_Lion