🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

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 No…

This overview surveys the fossil evidence for the evolution of the tiger, Panthera tigris, centred on Asia where the species and its relatives arose. Early forms such as the Pliocene Panthera zdanskyi…

This overview surveys the fossil history of the leopard, Panthera pardus, one of the most widely distributed living big cats. Fossils document the leopard's presence across Africa and Eurasia through…

This overview surveys the fossil history of the puma lineage, the New World group that includes the living puma and jaguarundi and is closely tied to the extinct American cheetah-like cat Miracinonyx.…

This overview describes two remarkably preserved cave lion cubs, nicknamed Sparta and Boris, recovered from the permafrost of Yakutia in northeastern Siberia. Frozen for tens of thousands of years, th…

This overview examines the fundamental mechanical compromise that shaped sabertooth skulls: achieving a gape wide enough to clear elongated canines came at the cost of bite force. Opening the jaws to…

This overview traces the long history of competing models for how sabertooths used their elongated canines. Early ideas ranged from stabbing thrusts to a clamp-type bite, but each faced the problem th…

This overview surveys efforts to determine when and where the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium finally disappeared on each continent. In the Americas the genus persisted into the late Pleistocene, whi…

This overview takes a deep-time perspective on the rise and fall of sabertooth cats, whose machairodont lineage flourished for more than ten million years before vanishing in the late Pleistocene. Aft…

This overview surveys the internal classification of the Machairodontinae, the true sabertooth cats within the family Felidae. Researchers commonly divide the subfamily into several tribes: the Smilod…

This overview surveys evidence on where and when the Panthera lineage, the genus that includes lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards, first arose. Molecular phylogenies place the diverge…

This overview examines the prey-restraint hypothesis, which holds that sabertooths, especially robust dirk-toothed forms like Smilodon, depended on overpowering and immobilizing prey with their foreli…

This overview surveys the evolutionary placement of the snow leopard within the big-cat genus Panthera and its relevance to fossil studies. Once isolated in its own genus, the snow leopard is now firm…

This overview reviews arguments that Homotherium may have been a social, cooperatively hunting cat. Evidence cited includes accumulations of juvenile mammoth remains at sites like Friesenhahn Cave, su…

This overview examines the deep evolutionary divergence within Felidae between the Felinae, the conical-toothed cats that include all living species, and the Machairodontinae, the extinct sabertooths.…

This overview examines the timing of extinction among the great carnivores of Rancho La Brea, including the sabertooth Smilodon fatalis and the American lion, whose latest dated remains cluster near t…

This overview examines the hypothesis that sabertooths killed primarily by directing a precise bite to the throat of immobilized prey. By driving the canines into the soft ventral neck, the cat could…

This overview surveys how palaeontologists distinguish the three generally recognized species of the sabertooth genus Smilodon. The earliest and smallest, Smilodon gracilis, appears in the early Pleis…

This overview reviews what is known about when and why Smilodon disappeared, with the best-dated records clustering near the end of the Pleistocene around the time of widespread megafaunal extinction…

This overview reviews evidence on when and why the cave lion disappeared, with the latest well-dated records indicating survival into the terminal Pleistocene before extinction roughly fourteen thousa…

This overview surveys the two recognized species of the American cheetah-like cat, Miracinonyx trumani and Miracinonyx inexpectatus. Miracinonyx trumani is the more derived, strongly cursorial form, w…

This overview surveys the emerging use of zinc isotopes in tooth enamel as a tool for reconstructing the trophic level and diet of fossil cats. Unlike collagen-based carbon and nitrogen analysis, whic…

This richly illustrated scholarly book synthesizes decades of research on sabertooth cats and their relatives, written and illustrated by a leading palaeoartist and researcher. It surveys the diversit…

Mauricio Anton · Indiana University Press · 2013

This study examined how sabertooth carnivores killed large prey by comparing the anatomy and inferred mechanics of dirk- and scimitar-toothed forms across multiple lineages. The authors analysed featu…

Ki Andersson, David Norman, Lars Werdelin · PLoS ONE · 2011

Using finite element analysis, the authors built a high-resolution digital model of a Smilodon fatalis skull and compared its mechanical performance against a modern lion. The simulations showed that…

Colin R. McHenry, Stephen Wroe, Philip D. Clausen, Karen Moreno, Eleanor Cunningham · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2007

This influential book provides a comprehensive illustrated survey of the cat family and its extinct members, combining scientific synthesis with detailed reconstructions of fossil felids and their sab…

Alan Turner, Mauricio Anton · Columbia University Press · 1997

This landmark study used molecular genetics to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the cat family, resolving the relationships among all living felids and the timing of their diversification. The…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006

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. Ad…

Daniel B. Adams · Science · 1979

This study generated genome-scale data from ancient and modern lions, including the extinct cave lion, to reconstruct the deep evolutionary history of the lion lineage. The analyses confirmed that the…

Marc de Manuel, Ross Barnett, Marcela Sandoval-Velasco, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020

This influential study quantified broken teeth among large carnivores from the Rancho La Brea asphalt deposits, including Smilodon fatalis, dire wolves, American lions, and coyotes. Tooth breakage rat…

Blaire Van Valkenburgh, Fritz Hertel · Science · 1993