Dating the Genetic Bottleneck of the African Cheetah

Building on earlier evidence of cheetah monomorphism, this study used hypervariable minisatellite and other molecular markers to estimate when the cheetah's genetic diversity collapsed. The analysis placed a major bottleneck near the end of the Pleistocene, roughly ten to twelve thousand years ago, coinciding with widespread large-mammal extinctions. The authors reasoned that the cheetah passed through a population crash so severe that surviving individuals were left highly inbred, with subsequent slow recovery preserving the depleted variation. The result gave a quantitative timeframe to the cheetah's conservation predicament and connected it to the broader terminal-Pleistocene megafaunal collapse.