II. The Evolution, Nomenclature & Taxonomy:

The Tiger is uncommon in the fossil record, which is why its evolution remains partly unclear. The oldest remains of a tiger like cat, called Panthera palaeosinensis have been found in China and Java. This species occurred about 2 million years ago at the beginning of the pleistocene and was smaller than a tiger. Early true tiger fossils stem from Java and are between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old. Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were discovered in deposits from China, Sumatra and Java. A subspecies called Trinil tiger (Panthera tigris trinilensis) occurred about 1.2 million years ago and was found at the locality of Trinil, Java, Indonesia. In India, and northern Asia the tiger appears for the first time in the late pleistocene. Fossil tigers were also found in eastern Beringia (but not on the American Continent) and Sachalin island. Tiger fossils of the late Pleistocene have also turned up in Japan. These fossils indicate that the Japanese tiger was not bigger than the island subspecies of tigers of recent ages. This may be due to the phenomenon in which body size is related to environmental space (see island dwarfism), or in the case of a large predator like a tiger, availability of prey. Until the Holocene tigers occurred also in Borneo, where it is not present today.

The word "tiger" is taken from the Greek word "TIGRIS", which itself is derived "possibly from an Iranian source." In American English, "TIGRESS" was first recorded in 1611. "Tiger's-Eye" is a name for a golden-brown striped, chatoyant, fibrous variety of quartz used as a semi-precious gemstone. It was one of the many species originally described, as Felis tigris, by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae. The generic component of its scientific designation, Panthera tigris, is often presumed to derive from Greek pan- ("all") and ther ("beast"), but this may be a folk etymology. Although it came into English through the classical languages, panthera is probably of East Asian origin, meaning "the yellowish animal," or "whitish-yellow".