Leo (constellation) Leo (constellation) Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac, lying between Cancer the crab to the west and Virgo the maiden to the east. Its name is Latin for lion, and to the ancient Greeks represented the Nemean Lion killed by the mythical Greek hero Heracles meaning 'Glory of Hera' (known to the ancient Romans as Hercules) as one of his twelve labors. Its symbol is (Unicode ♌). One of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, Leo remains one of the 88 modern constellations today, and one of the most easily recognizable due to its
American lion modern lion, making it one of the largest known felids. The American lion was designated by American paleontologist Joseph Leidy as "Felis atrox" in 1853. Hemmer proposed the trinomen "Panthera leo atrox" in 1974, which was later supported by Kurten in 1985. The American lion was initially considered a distinct species of Pantherinae, and designated as "Panthera atrox" , which means "cruel" or "fearsome panther" in Latin. Some paleontologists accepted this view, but others considered it to be a type of lion closely related to the modern lion ("Panthera" "leo") and its extinct relative, the Eurasian cave lion ("Panthera leo