Research overview: genetics of Pleistocene felid extinctions

The end of the Pleistocene saw the loss of many large cats, including sabertooths, cave lions, American lions, and the American cheetah, as part of the broader megafaunal extinction. This overview surveys how ancient DNA contributes to understanding these losses, including reconstructing the population histories and declining diversity of doomed lineages, testing whether they were already genetically depleted before extinction, and linking their disappearance to climate change and human expansion. It discusses how the survivors, such as the modern cheetah and lion, often bear genetic scars of the same upheaval, and how paleogenomics integrates extinction biology with the evolutionary history of cats.