Friday, March 5, 2010

The Last Mountain Lion

...in Pennsylvania, at least - was killed in my home county of Berks in 1874, right off what is now the Appalachian Trail, maybe 10 miles east of where the picture shown in this post were taken in November of last year.

It would be interesting to see how this barely-preserved animal compares genetically to the closest remnant populations in the Black Hills and the Ozarks, if we could get any decent sized DNA fragments out of the tissue (anything but a done deal).

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