Which extinct lion population was native to North Africa's Atlas Mountains?

The extinct lion population native to North Africa's Atlas Mountains was the Barbary lion.

The Barbary lion, also called the Atlas lion or North African lion, lived across the Maghreb, including the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria. It occupied forests, scrub, mountains and surrounding dry landscapes, and historically ranged as far east as Egypt. The population declined as firearms, bounties, habitat change and persecution reduced both lions and their prey.

The last recorded shooting of a wild Barbary lion took place near Tizi n'Tichka in Morocco's Atlas Mountains in 1942. Historical evidence suggests that small remnant groups may have survived in remote parts of Algeria into the early 1960s and in Morocco into the mid-1960s, but the population is extinct in the wild today.

A modern taxonomic complication explains why some sources use different names. Genetic and morphological studies led specialists to group the Barbary lion with the northern lion subspecies, Panthera leo leo, rather than treating it as a fully separate subspecies. Captive lions sometimes called Barbary lions may preserve historical ancestry, but captivity does not mean the wild population survives.