Research overview: the fossil history and dispersal of the jaguar

This overview surveys the fossil record of the jaguar lineage and its spread into the Americas. The jaguar, Panthera onca, traces its origins to Old World pantherines whose descendants crossed into North America, where Pleistocene populations, sometimes recognized as the larger Panthera onca augusta, ranged far beyond the cat's present distribution. The survey reviews how the jaguar reached and spread through North and South America, the larger body size of its Ice Age forms, and how it coexisted with other big cats such as the American lion and Smilodon. It discusses the evidence from cave and open-air sites documenting the jaguar's former range, what its size reduction and range contraction reveal about late Pleistocene change, and how the jaguar's history illustrates pantherine dispersal across the New World.