The Rabat National Zoo (Jardin Zoologique National de Rabat) is Morocco's largest zoological park, spread over roughly 50 hectares on the road toward Temara, southwest of central Rabat. Reopened in its modern form in 2012 on the site of the former 1973 Temara zoo, it recreates five Moroccan and African ecosystems — the Atlas mountains, wetlands, savanna, tropical forest and desert. It is best known for keeping the world's largest captive group of Atlas (Barbary) lions, a subspecies extinct in the wild whose descendants trace back to lions once held by the Moroccan royal family.