Answer:
The tiger's closest living relatives were previously thought to be the Panthera species lion, leopard, and jaguar.
Explanation:
Results of genetic analysis indicate that about 2.88 million years ago, the tiger and the snow leopard lineages diverged from the other Panthera species, and that both may be more closely related to each other than to the lion, leopard and jaguar. The geographic origin of the Panthera is most likely northern Central Asia or the Holarctic region. The tiger–snow leopard lineage dispersed in Southeast Asia during the Miocene.
Panthera zdanskyi is considered to be a sister taxon of the modern tiger. It lived at the beginning of the Pleistocene about two million years ago, its fossil remains were excavated in Gansu province of northwestern China. It was smaller and more "primitive", but functionally and ecologically similar to the modern tiger. It is disputed as to whether it had the striping pattern. Northwestern China is thought to be the origin of the tiger lineage. Tigers grew in size, possibly in response to adaptive radiations of prey species like deer and bovids, which may have occurred in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene.
