Lion

Ring made entirely by hand by the Italian craftsman Gianmarco Fontana. Ring made of 925 Silver, which is part of the "Animalia" collection depicting the muzzle of a lion.

The lion (Panthera leo Linnaeus, 1758) is a carnivorous mammal of the felidae family. After the tiger, it is the largest of the five great felids of the Panthera genus with some males whose body mass exceeds 250 kg. Its range in 2011 was reduced almost exclusively to sub-Saharan Africa; the continuous impoverishment of its natural habitat and the protracted poaching against it make it a vulnerable species according to the IUCN.

A very small population survives in Gir Forest National Park in India, while the specimens that inhabited North Africa and the Middle East have disappeared for many centuries. Until the Pleistocene, about ten thousand years ago, the lion was the second most widespread large mammal after man. At that time, lions were found in much of Eurasia and Africa, and even in North America (in the form of Panthera leo atrox), from the Yukon to Peru.