Kingdom Animalia Order Carnivora Genus Panthera Higher classification Leopard | Phylum Chordata Family Felidae Scientific name Panthera pardus jarvisi Rank Subspecies | |
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Similar Leopard, Roaring cats, Barbary leopard, Felidae, Indochinese leopard | ||
The Sinai leopard (Panthera pardus jarvisi) is a leopard population that used to be considered a subspecies until 1996 from the Sinai peninsula.
Taxonomic and evolutionary history
The Sinai leopard has initially been described as a leopard subspecies under the scientific name Panthera pardus jarvisi by Pocock in 1932. Since the late 1990s, leopards were not recorded in Egypt any more.
In the early 1990s, a phylogeographic analysis was carried out based on tissue samples from Asian and African leopards. The Sinai leopard was provisionally grouped with the Persian leopard (P. p. saxicolor), as tissue samples were not available. Subsequent molecular biologists tentatively proposed in 2001 to group the Sinai leopard with the Arabian leopard (P. p. nimr), as again tissue samples were not available.