Cave Lion

Cave lions were 25% larger than modern African lions and dominated Pleistocene Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years. They were the apex predators of ice age Europe and Asia, competing with Neanderthals and early humans for the same prey. Then they went extinct around 13,000 years ago while their smaller African relatives survived.

The cave lion extinction illustrates how apex strategies fail when the prey base collapses. Like dire wolves and short-faced bears, cave lions specialized in megafauna—mammoths, giant deer, and bison that disappeared at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Their larger size required more food than modern lions need; when large prey vanished, cave lions couldn't sustain themselves on smaller alternatives.

The business parallel is dominant players who can't scale down when their core market shrinks. Cave lions are like companies optimized for large enterprise deals that can't economically serve mid-market customers when enterprise spending contracts. Modern African lions, smaller and more flexible, persisted by adapting to available prey. The cave lion case shows that being the biggest predator in your market doesn't protect you when the market itself disappears.