The cheetah: native American?

This influential paper argued that the modern cheetah lineage had deep roots in the New World, drawing attention to the extinct North American cheetah-like cats now placed in the genus Miracinonyx. Adams highlighted the striking similarities between these Pleistocene American cats and the living African and Asian cheetah, including cursorial limb proportions and skull features suited to high-speed pursuit, and proposed an evolutionary connection. While later ancient-DNA work would show that Miracinonyx is more closely related to the puma and that its cheetah-like form arose by convergence rather than direct ancestry, the paper was pivotal in framing the question and stimulating decades of research into cheetah origins, New World cat evolution, and the coevolution of predators and fast prey such as the pronghorn.