For Decades, Scientists Thought an 'American Cheetah' Once Roamed North America. Turns Out the Extinct Cat Wasn't a Cheetah

During the Pleistocene epoch, some 12,000 to 2.6 million years ago, a feline predator known as the American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani) roamed the grasslands of what’s now North America. Except, according to a new study, the extinct creature wasn’t a cheetah at all. After analyzing four fossils uncovered in Wyoming and the Yukon Territory in Canada, a team of researchers suggests that the wild cat was more closely related to the modern puma, also called the mountain lion or cougar, than to today’s cheetahs.

The work, published in the journal Current Biology on September 4, offers a new understanding of the ancient animal’s range, diet and evolution. The misnomer dates to when the species was first described in 1979. Scientists thought the fossils shared striking similarities with today’s cheetahs in Africa and Asia, such as elongated legs, enlarged nasal cavities and a slender build.

But recent studies have complicated that assumption. In 2005, for instance, DNA evidence hinted that M. trumani evolved from a puma-like ancestor. Evolutionarily, that makes sense, Cassatt-Johnstone tells Gizmodo’s Ellyn Lapointe.

Cheetahs are old world, so in Asia and Africa, and so there would have had to have been a migration event if they were most closely related to cheetahs.” Cassatt-Johnstone and colleagues made their discovery while examining the three fossils from the Yukon in northwestern Canada, reports Science News. The team initially assumed the remains belonged to pumas, since American cheetahs had never been discovered that far north. Analyses showed that M. trumani’s lineage diverged from the ancestors of modern pumas around 2.6 million years ago, while it diverged from the cheetah lineage around 4.7 million years ago.

The extinct feline’s slender body—previously assumed to be a sign of its cheetah-ness—is now thought to be an example of convergent evolution. It’s a phenomenon where two unrelated or distantly related species independently evolve similar features because of similar environmental pressures. The researchers also wanted to know what an animal with such a wide range ate, so they analyzed forms of nitrogen and carbon in all four fossils.

The work hinted that the creature from Wyoming, which lived around 23,000 years ago, probably feasted on herbivores like pronghorn. On the other hand, the Yukon cats, which lived around 31,000 years ago, likely munched on fish such as salmon. Pumas are known as versatile predators that eat all sorts of prey: deer, horses, moose, raccoons, capybaras and even penguins.