Yes. The previous post was Grade-A Bull-Plop,
It is true that the two extinct North American “cheetahs” (Miracinonyx) were close relatives of the modern cougar. They have been posited as the reason why pronghorns are so fast, and I’ve thought a better name for them would be “coursing cougars.”
And yes, Pleistocene North American cougars went extinct, and the current cougar population is derived from a recolonization event from the South American population that happened around 8,000 BC, which is 10,000 years ago.
But no one has been able to get a full-genome sequence out of either extinct species of North American cheetah. In theory, cougars and these false cheetahs would have been able to hybridize, so it is within the possibility that they might have contributed some genetic material to modern cougars.
Yes. April Fools’. Throw your rotten fruit at me now. I deserve it.
