Was It An African Lion?

A helicopter and members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Division of Wildlife were among those searching for an African lion in eastern El Paso County on Monday. The search for the large cat was called off Monday afternoon.

Was the large unknown animal seen in Colorado an African lion? Panthera atrox, the American Lion, known from the Pleistocene? A feral dog? An escaped pet felid?

It certainly befits the classic definition of a cryptid, unknown, uncaught, unidentified, and yet surely an animal.

Here is a roundup of the various reproductions of the cellphone image published this week of this “cat.”

What happens when the cryptid is found and killed? In 2002, two lions, male, maned, seemingly African lions were sighted, then found, and killed in Arkansas.

No DNA analysis was done, neither of the bodies or samples were kept, nothing was mounted, or no one tried to figure out where the lions came from, if they were, indeed, escapees, in the first place. Instead, the bodies were destroyed, reportedly burned.

What happens if a discovered Panthera atrox, as theorized, is a look-alike for the African lion? Has evidence and verification already gone vanishing because people don’t know what they are looking at?

These existing photos of the two killed Arkansas lions (mostly one is shown), for September 23 and 24, 2002, which I archived at the time, clearly show a maned felid.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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