Rare fossil of North American lion unearthed in Alberta gravel pit

By Jacob Sulit

In June of 1965, Jerry Kuhn and his father Peter Kuhn stumbled across the upper jaw bone, or “maxilla” of an extinct lion near Acadia Valley, Alberta.

“Our family farm was four miles north of Acadia Valley and mom and dad decided to move to Acadia Valley. I was 16 at the time, I was going to be 17 in July. We just went down to the gravel pit on the west side of the 41 highway about a half mile north of the Red Deer River. The land was owned by McLennon ranchers at the time and the MD of Acadia had a gravel pit there they subleased from McLennon’s. That’s where we went to. We just needed some pit run to fill in a hole” says Jerry Kuhn. “We jumped in our little half ton truck, and we drove down to the gravel pit and we backed into a specific spot and he was hand bombing it on from one side, and I was hand bombing it on from the other side, and I discovered this jaw bone.”

A computer generated image of what the North American Lion or Panthera atrox was thought to have looked like.

A dramatic recreation of Jerry and Peter Kuhn at the gravel pit near Acadia Valley, Alberta.

A replica of the upper jaw bone discovered by Jerry Kuhn.

Almost 60 years later, Jerry Kuhn describes the story of his exciting discovery.

The upper jaw bone Jerry discovered belonged to one of North America’s most formidable predators, the North American Lion. Scientifically known as Panthera atrox, this apex predator is an extinct species belonging to the cat family, felidae. The powerful predator roamed much of North America during the late Pleistocene epoch, roughly 130,000 to 12,000 years ago. Other occurrences of the North American Lion suggest that the predator roamed parts of southern Alberta as well. This massive cat was around 25% larger than today’s lions, making it one of the largest felids ever known. The North American lion became extinct as part of the end-Pleistocene extinction event along with most other large animals across the Americas.

“We, at that time, presumed it was a bear. We didn’t know what it was for sure. We took it all home and it sat in the garage for a while. I remember dad talking to a friend of his, who was a school teacher in Acadia Valley, and between the three of us we decided that maybe somebody should be contacted about this because we didn’t know what it was and we knew it was something different” says Kuhn. “My dad phoned the Alberta Museum in Edmonton and a curator came out, and fairly soon after he was contacted he took it back with him and that’s where it went from there. He wrote up a little booklet on it and sent it back to us.”

In 1970, a scientific paper about Kuhn's discovery was published by C.R Harington in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Today the jaw bone sits in the archives of the Royal Alberta Museum, where further research is being conducted on the fossil.

While discovering a fossil like Jerry's Panthera atrox jaw is extremely rare, finding other fossils in the area is not uncommon. “When I get talking to people about this situation, everybody’s found something some time in their lives. It’s pretty prolific out in this area if you want to go look for it.”

This remarkable discovery adds another chapter to Alberta's prehistoric history, leaving scientists and enthusiasts alike eager to learn what other fossils may lie beneath the surface in the region.