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

Ancient DNA from fossils found in Wyoming and Canada’s Yukon Territory suggests the wild cat more closely resembled modern pumas than modern cheetahs

Sara Hashemi | Daily Correspondent

September 11, 2026 10:00 a.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

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.

“Calling it the American cheetah implies a specific behavior and ecology, which isn’t necessarily appropriate for this species,” says study co-author Molly Cassatt-Johnstone, a molecular ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to Erin Garcia de Jesús at Science News.

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. “Pumas are a new world lineage; they are found in the Americas. 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.

“It wasn’t until we were able to generate the genetic data that we were able to identify them as American cheetahs,” Cassatt-Johnstone tells the outlet. “Then, that led to this whole discovery avalanche.”

Using DNA from the Yukon fossils, along with another from Wyoming, the team constructed an evolutionary tree with other wild cats. 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.

“To find two populations of the same species with such different diets is really cool,” says Ross Barnett, an independent paleontologist who led the 2005 study but was not involved in the new work, to Tim Vernimmen at National Geographic. “That they were found in Arctic biomes is a huge finding.”

The team uncovered other climate-related specializations too. M. trumani had mutations that blocked certain genes from regulating the circadian rhythm, which suggests the animal “may have adapted to the extreme light cycles of summers and winters in northern latitudes,” Cassatt-Johnstone explains in a statement.

It was also missing a functional gene that encodes a sour taste receptor, hinting at a highly specialized diet. What’s more, all the cat species included in the study’s evolutionary tree—such as the lion and Canada lynx—shared this mutation, the team found.

“This implies it happened millions of years ago,” Cassatt-Johnstone tells National Geographic. “But it seems no one had noticed yet.”

Sara Hashemi is a science writer and fact-checker currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Body, Maisonneuve magazine and more.