CASPIAN TIGER

The Caspian tiger was a tiger population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies that was native to

eastern Turkey, northern Iran, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus around the Caspian Sea, Central Asia to
northern Afghanistan, the Xinjiang region in western China.[6] Until the Middle Ages, it was also
present in Ukraine and southern Russia.[7] It inhabited sparse forests and riverine corridors in this
region until the 1970s.[1] This population was regarded as a distinct subspecies and assessed as
extinct in 2003.[3]
Results of a phylogeographic analysis evinces that the Caspian and Siberian tiger populations
shared a common continuous geographic distribution until the early 19th century.[8]
Some Caspian tigers were intermediate in size between Siberian and Bengal tigers.[7][4][9]
It was also called Balkhash tiger, Hyrcanian tiger, Turanian tiger,[3] and Mazandaran tiger