Qasr mosaic leopard and VMS Leo/August image

[Helmut Winkler]

Something else worth considering is that these European Leo images seem to show a wide diversity of tail endings, some of them unusual.  Was doing something funky with the end of Leo's tail an established convention, like a way for the illustrator...

Doing funky things to lions tails was very common in European heraldry, a good example is the double tailed Bohemian lion