Research overview: the cat gap in the North American fossil record

This overview examines the cat gap, a roughly seven-million-year interval in the Oligocene and early Miocene during which true cats are essentially absent from the North American fossil record, even though nimravid false sabertooths persisted there earlier. The survey reviews the leading explanations, including ecological competition with established carnivore guilds, climatic and habitat changes, and the timing of felid dispersal out of the Old World. True cats reappear in North America only when Pseudaelurus-grade felids arrived via the Bering land bridge in the Miocene. The survey discusses how the cat gap illustrates the role of immigration and competition in shaping continental faunas and why it marks an important boundary in the history of cats in the New World.