My particular interest is Asiatic lions, which are a sub-species of African lions. It's almost a hundred thousand years since the Asiatic lions split off and developed as a sub-species. At one time the Asiatic lion was living as far west as Greece and they were found from there, in a band that spread east through various countries of the Middle East, all the way to India. In museums, you can now see Greek coins that have clear images of the Asiatic lion on them. Most of them are dated at around 500 B.C. However, Europe saw its last Asiatic lion roaming free two thousand years ago. Over the next nineteen hundred years the numbers of Asiatic lions in the other areas declined steadily, but it was only in the nineteenth century that they disappeared from everywhere but India. So, how can you tell an Asiatic lion from an African lion, with which you're probably more familiar?