Description

This is a urethane plastic replica cast of a tigon skull. A tigon is a hybrid between a lion and a tiger, but is much lesser known than that other lion/tiger hybrid, the liger. A tigon is the offspring of a male tiger and lioness, while a liger is the reverse. And due to a quirk of the genetics of lions, it is the lion parent that determines the size of the hybrid. Male lions have genes that increase the size and strength of the offspring, while lionesses have corresponding genes that try to cancel the male’s size promoting genes out. So when lions breed with lions, the offspring are similar in size to the parents. But in the case of a tigon, you have the lionesses’ size reducing gene being dominant, and therefore the offspring tend to be smaller than either parent. And the liger goes the other way – it becomes enormous since there is nothing to check the male lion’s genes. I have no idea if this is a male or female skull, but just making an educated guess, I’d say it is a female, due to the delicate bone structure and the narrowness of the skull. The skull is 11 1/2 long by 7 1/4″ wide (total score of 18 3/4″). Every detail has been captured, right down to the texture of the bone and the open nerve and blood vessel holes in the skull. This replica has been cast in two different colors of urethane for added realism – untinted (white) for the teeth and off white for the bone.