A helicopter and members of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Division of Wildlife were among those searching for an African lion in eastern El Paso County on Monday. The search for the large cat was called off Monday afternoon.

Was the large unknown animal seen in Colorado an African lion? Panthera atrox, the American Lion, known from the Pleistocene? A feral dog? An escaped pet felid?

It certainly befits the classic definition of a cryptid, unknown, uncaught, unidentified, and yet surely an animal.

Here is a roundup of the various reproductions of the cellphone image published this week of this “cat.”

One of the biggest blowups is this one:

What do you see?

What happens when the cryptid is found and killed? In 2002, two lions, male, maned, seemingly African lions were sighted, then found, and killed in Arkansas.

No DNA analysis was done, neither of the bodies or samples were kept, nothing was mounted, or no one tried to figure out where the lions came from, if they were, indeed, escapees, in the first place. Instead, the bodies were destroyed, reportedly burned.

What happens if a discovered Panthera atrox, as theorized, is a look-alike for the African lion? Has evidence and verification already gone vanishing because people don’t know what they are looking at?

These existing photos of the two killed Arkansas lions (mostly one is shown), for September 23 and 24, 2002, which I archived at the time, clearly show a maned felid.