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Cecil the Lion was killed, beheaded and skinned five months ago by Walter Palmer, an American dentist as well as a part-time hunter. However, Cecil's son, Xanda, has been spotted gallivanting with many lionesses, making scientists feel that his grand cubs would be born in March 2016, according to Newsweek.

He was just one of the cubs that could be correctly related to Cecil's lineage, even though Cecil would have sown his wild oats among many lionesses in Hwange, according to The Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.

Just celebrating the birth of Cecil's grand cubs is a big breakthrough for "conservation and animal ecology", according to David Macdonald, founding director of Oxford University's WildCRU, a researcher who has been exploring lions here since 1999, reports Raw Story.

"The real point of this story is not just the pleasure we might all take in thinking of Cecil's lineage continuing, but more especially the illustration of the power of long-term studies in animal ecology. It takes many years to build up a picture of lions' lives, giving us now the capacity to follow the fates of lineages," he said.

The announcement was made on Monday when Obama administration said that it was putting lions in Africa under the Endangered Species Act. That would require big game hunters to stick by a harder set of rules while "trophy hunting", according to The Telegraph.

The lion's death is seen to be a "defining moment", prompting officials to ask the government for tougher hunting regulations.