The oldest tiger fossils, thought to be two million years old, were found in northern China and Java (Hemmer H (1987) The phylogeny of the tiger (Panthera tigris). In: Tilson RL, Seal US, editors. Tigers of the world: The biology, biopolitics, management and conservation of an endangered species. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Publications. pp. 28–35.).
Tigers became widely distributed in eastern Asia by the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene epochs. During the Pleistocene epoch, glacial and interglacial fluctuations and other geological events probably caused repeated geographic restrictions and expansions which would have created barriers as well as new paths for tiger migration.
The most recent common ancestor for tiger mtDNA haplotypes has been traced back to 72,000–108,000 years ago (Luo S-J, Kim J-H, Johnson WE, Walt Jvd, Martenson J, et al. 2004 Phylogeography and Genetic Ancestry of Tigers (Panthera tigris). PLoS Biol 2(12): e442. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020442).
There are eight traditionally recognized tiger (Panthera tigris) subspecies:
- Bali (P. t. balica) – extinct
- Caspian (P. t. virgata) – extinct
- Javan (P. t. sondaica) – extinct
- Bengal tigers (P. t. tigris)
- Amur or Siberian tigers (P. t. altaica)
- Amoy or South China tigers (P. t. amoyensis) – in captivity only.
- Sumatran tigers (P. t. sumatrae)
- Indochinese tigers (P. t. corbetti)
A map of the original and current distribution of tiger subspecies can be seen here. You can see a graph illustrating the decline of tiger populations here.
Here is a site that keeps track of wildlife trade which almost entirely responsible for the decimation of the tiger populations in the wild.
Further reading and viewing:
