Barbary Lion

The Barbary lion, also called the North African lion,[1] Berber lion, Atlas lion,[2] and Egyptian lion,[3] is an extinct population of the lion subspecies Panthera leo leo. It lived in the mountains and deserts of the Barbary Coast of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt.[4] It was eradicated following the spread of firearms and bounties for shooting lions.[1] A comprehensive review of hunting and sighting records revealed that small groups of lions may have survived in Algeria until the early 1960s, and in Morocco until the mid-1960s.[4] Today, it is locally extinct in this region.[5] Until 2017, the Barbary lion was considered a distinct lion subspecies.[6][7][8] Results of morphological and genetic analyses of lion samples from North Africa showed that Barbary lions do not differ significantly from the Asiatic lion and are closely related to lions from West and northern parts of Central Africa. Accordingly, it belongs to the northern lion Subspecies P. l. leo and within this subspecies belongs to the Asiatic lion subclade.[9][10][11]