Caspian tiger (SciiFii)

The Caspian tiger is a Panthera tigris tigris population, which lived from eastern Turkey, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus around the Caspian Sea through Central Asia to northern Afghanistan and Xinjiang in western China.[4] It inhabited sparse forests and riverine corridors in this region until the 1970s.[1] This population was assessed as extinct in 2003.[5]

Felis virgata was the scientific name proposed in 1815 by Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger for tigers in the Caspian Sea area.[6] It was traditionally recognised as a distinct subspecies, Panthera tigris virgata. However, results of phylogeographic analysis indicate that the Caspian and Siberian tiger populations shared a common continuous geographic distribution until the early 19th century.[7]

Some Caspian tiger individuals were intermediate in size between Siberian and Bengal tigers.[8][2][9]

The Caspian tiger was also called Balkhash tiger, Hyrcanian tiger, Turanian tiger,[5] and Babre Mazandaran (Persian: ببرِ مازندران‎), depending on the region of its occurrence.[10]