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There were different mythological adaptions for the winged lion: 1  Shedu in Sumerian, Akkadian, Persian, and Iranian tribes mythology was depicted as a winged lion. 2  He has often been depicted with a bull body instead of a lion body. 3  The winged lion was the heraldic symbol of Mark the Evangelist.
Scientific Name: Panthera leo. The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera and a member of the family Felidae. The catâs closest relatives are the other species of the genus Panthera: the tiger, the jaguar, and the leopard.Panthera leo appears to have evolved in Africa between 1 million and 800,000 years ago, before spreading throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It is the second-largest wild cat after the tiger.ince then it evolved into what is known as the true Cave Lion (Panthera leo spelaea) which, during the last 60,000 years, became extinct, probably due to a combination of climate change and over-hunting by humans.