Tens of thousands of years ago, a long-legged cat nicknamed the “American cheetah” prowled North America. But an analysis of the cat family tree reveals this cheetah’s closest living relatives are pumas, researchers report September 4 in Current Biology. That relationship matters because the nickname has long suggested a particular kind of animal: a specialized, high-speed predator like the African cheetah built to chase fleet-footed prey such as American pronghorn, which can sprint up to nearly 90 kilometers per hour.
But a growing body of evidence hints that the American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani) may be more closely related to modern-day pumas. Pumas are far more flexible hunters, taking prey that range from large, hoofed animals like deer and elk to much smaller rodents and raccoons. Now, fossils from Canada’s Yukon Territory suggest M. trumani may have been more flexible, too.
The extinct Pleistocene predator inhabited North American grasslands from roughly 2.5 million to 16,000 years ago, and its fossils have sometimes been found alongside presumed prey. But the newly analyzed Yukon remains expand the cat’s known range further to the north — and chemical clues preserved in the fossils suggest those northern animals may have eaten aquatic animals. She and colleagues didn’t set out to uncover the American cheetah’s true family tree.
The original goal was to use ancient genetic material to verify the identity of three roughly 31,000-year-old fossils from the Yukon. Because the fossils were so far north, researchers had tentatively identified the fossils as pumas. The previous fossil record spanned from Florida to the northern plains.
Three new specimens from Bluefish Caves and Upper Quartz Creek in Yukon Territory expanded the cheetah’s known range into Canada. Ancient DNA from those specimens, plus another from Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, revealed M. trumani’s closest modern relative is the puma. Ancient DNA from the Yukon specimens, plus DNA from another M. trumani fossil unearthed in Wyoming, confirmed the species’s closest relative is pumas.
The two species last shared a common ancestor around 2.6 million years ago. M. trumani and cheetahs, on the other hand, split roughly 4.7 million years ago. Because the animals lived so far north, most likely without pronghorn, the team wanted to know what the cats ate.
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