🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This overview surveys Panthera gombaszoegensis, an extinct big cat of the Pleistocene of Europe and western Asia often nicknamed the European jaguar because of similarities to the living jaguar. Known…

This overview surveys Panthera palaeosinensis, an early pantherine from the Pliocene of China that has figured prominently in debates about the origins of big cats. Known from cranial and dental mater…

This overview surveys the taxonomy of the Eurasian cave lion and its immediate ancestors. The classic Late Pleistocene cave lion is usually called Panthera spelaea, while larger, earlier Middle Pleist…

This overview surveys the early machairodonts Paramachairodus and the closely related Promegantereon, small to mid-sized dirk-toothed cats known from the late Miocene of Spain. Exceptional material fr…

This overview describes Pit 91, one of the most carefully excavated deposits at Rancho La Brea, and its contribution to sabertooth science. Unlike the rapid early salvage digs of the twentieth century…

This overview examines Proailurus, widely regarded as the earliest true cat, known principally from the late Oligocene and early Miocene of Europe, including the famous Quercy fissure fillings of Fran…

This overview examines attempts to track changes in Smilodon fatalis populations across the tens of thousands of years recorded by the Rancho La Brea pits. Because different pits accumulated at differ…

This overview examines Smilodon populator, the largest known sabertooth cat, which roamed the plains and woodlands of Pleistocene South America after felids crossed the Panamanian land bridge. Body-ma…

This overview surveys the fossil record of Smilodon across South America, including the tar seeps of Talara in Peru, which offer a southern counterpart to Rancho La Brea. The continent preserves both…

This overview surveys Styriofelis and related small Miocene cats, sometimes also referred to under names such as Miopanthera, that are placed near the base of the Felinae following the breakup of the…

This overview examines Thylacosmilus, a South American sparassodont metatherian that convergently evolved a striking sabertooth form despite being only distantly related to placental cats. It bore eve…

This overview surveys Xenosmilus, an unusual North American machairodont that combined features of scimitar- and dirk-toothed cats, with relatively short, broad, serrated canines set in a massive, hea…

This overview surveys the disappearance of numerous large cats, including Smilodon, Homotherium, the American lion, the cave lion, and Miracinonyx, as part of the broader late Quaternary megafaunal ex…

This overview examines the evolutionary geography of the cheetah lineage and its New World relatives. Molecular and fossil evidence indicate that the cheetah-puma group has a complex transatlantic his…

This overview examines how body size influenced which carnivores survived the end-Pleistocene extinctions and which, like the great cats, did not. Large predators tend to have smaller populations, low…

This overview surveys what skeletal evidence reveals about the body size of the cave lion and the degree of size difference between the sexes. Panthera spelaea was a large cat, generally exceeding the…

This overview examines the body size of Panthera atrox, frequently cited as one of the largest cats ever to have lived. Reconstructions based on its robust skeleton suggest it exceeded the modern Afri…

This overview reviews how body size changed over the long history of the machairodont sabertooths. From relatively modest early forms in the Miocene, several lineages trended toward large or giant siz…

This overview reviews what natural and digital endocasts reveal about the brain of Smilodon. By examining the internal cavity of well-preserved La Brea skulls and using CT scanning to generate virtual…

This overview reviews studies of how the famous sabre canines of Smilodon grew and erupted during an individual's life. Using La Brea specimens spanning juveniles to adults, and incremental growth lin…

This overview surveys studies of how strong, or how vulnerable, the elongated canines of sabertooths actually were. Because the long, blade-like teeth are relatively narrow from side to side, they are…

This overview surveys how the Great American Biotic Interchange, triggered by the rise of the Panamanian land bridge, allowed cats to spread between North and South America. Following this connection,…

This overview surveys efforts to reconstruct the coat colour and appearance of the cave lion using frozen cubs and ancient DNA. The preserved fur of permafrost specimens provides direct evidence of pe…

This overview examines studies of genetic diversity and population structure within the cave lion, based on ancient DNA from specimens spanning the species' range and time depth. Such analyses have re…

This overview examines depictions of cave lions in Upper Paleolithic art, most famously the powerful panel of lions at Chauvet Cave in France, along with engravings and figurines from across Ice Age E…

This overview surveys the cave and sinkhole deposits that have yielded the best-preserved remains of Miracinonyx, including material from caves in the Grand Canyon region and pitfall sites such as Nat…

This overview surveys what the claw anatomy of sabertooth cats reveals about how they handled prey. Like living felids, machairodonts had retractile claws, but in robust dirk-toothed forms such as Smi…

This overview surveys the long-running debate over whether climate change, human activity, or a combination of both drove sabertooths and other big cats to extinction at the end of the Pleistocene. Pr…

This overview surveys evidence for ecological interaction and competition between the sabertooth Smilodon fatalis and the dire wolf, the two most abundant large carnivores at Rancho La Brea. Researche…

This overview examines why reconstructing the relationships among the living big cats has proven difficult, with different genes and analyses sometimes yielding conflicting trees. The lion, leopard, a…