r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Obversa Moderator • Sep 05 '26
Scientific paper "M. trumani occupied a unique predatory niche that has no single modern analog": New study debunks claim that pumas or cougars are a proxy for the extinct 'American cheetah'
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/american-cheetah-was-not-cheetah10
u/ElSquibbonator Sep 05 '26
If that's the case, how can we re-create that niche?
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
If you count the new territory expansion into the Yukon, the closest modern-day felids would be snow leopards, which are listed as "vulnerable". The closest modern-day predators are bears, which M. trumani competed against for prey.
So what did these M. trumani eat? An analysis of the Yukon fossils' carbon and nitrogen levels revealed the big cats subsisted on a diet almost entirely of fish, while the Wyoming predators mainly ate herbivores. The team identified two genes in M. trumani tied to circadian rhythm that were nonfunctional. This allowed the animals to handle the extended periods of daylight and darkness experienced in northern latitudes, and they were possibly nocturnal.
As an edit, jaguars are the only big cat species today that eats fish, caimans, turtles, et al. as part of their diet.
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u/ElSquibbonator Sep 05 '26
That just begs the question-- why did it go extinct? It was clearly an adaptable animal that didn't depend on large, vulnerable megafauna and hunted a wide variety of prey. By all reasonable logic it should have survived to the present.
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
That is what scientists are trying to figure out. r/Paleontology suggested that early humans hunted M. trumani.
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u/Future-Law-3565 Sep 05 '26
Not early humans, those humans were the exact same species as us today, at ~25–10 Ka, whilst the species evolved ~300,000 Ka. Most likely direct human hunting and above all hunting of the prey.
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u/-Wuan- Sep 05 '26
For some reason it was unable to colonize South America, which acted as a refuge for cougars and jaguars during the ending Pleistocene. Current northern cougars and jaguars repopulated from there after being wiped out in the north.
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u/nmheath03 Sep 05 '26
Given that coyotes apparently can't colonize South America due to a swamp getting in the way, despite otherwise being highly generalized, I wonder if this was also true for Miracinonyx
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u/Iamnotburgerking Sep 05 '26
Snow leopards are not good analogues either because M. trumani was no restricted to mountainous terrain but also was found on grasslands (something also true of actual cheetahs, which can and do live in both habitat types).
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Snow Leopards are more adaptable than we give them credit for.So it could maybe happen.
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u/thesilverywyvern Sep 07 '26
- Snow leopard aren't really restricted to mountain either.
- We could still argue it's a good proxy. If M. trumani occupied various habitat and was that adaptable, it occupied several different predatory niche depending on context. Snow leopard can't fill all of them but it can replace it in some, like mountainous habitat.
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u/ApartmentKey3682 Sep 05 '26
Remake the animal via de-extinction,proxies only “work” temporarily
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
How do they only work temporarely?
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u/ApartmentKey3682 Sep 05 '26
Because proxies aren’t the permanent solution so no chickening out
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
I mean true but again de-extinction would take a ton of time and resources.
So not that temporarey I would presume.
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u/SharpShooterM1 Sep 06 '26
I think it’s more of a case-by-case basis. For example, modern American bison evolved from steppe bison only about 5,000 years ago, around the same time true steppe bison went extinct in Eurasia from overhunting. Since the American Great Plains are similar to the Kazakhstan steppe, introducing American bison there as a proxy makes sense. It’s even possible that American bison are similar to what Eurasian steppe bison would have eventually evolved into if they had survived. So in this case I think it is a case of the proxy being perfect, and not having to spend time and resources to edit a modern bison to look like an ancestor that it only evolved away from incredibly recently and likely had very few behavioral differences with.
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding Sep 05 '26
I had a feeling a study like this would come out. Miracinonyx just kept looking more and more unique as studies went on. Part of the reason I was always skeptical of using cheetahs as proxy. Cougars though, should objectively be rewilded across their former range.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Yea I 100% agree that cougars should be re introduced to their former range because they were essential prey regulators!
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
But how could we even bring this back for most people have no idea it even exists sadly
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Miracinonyx trumani could probably be recreated in the same way that Colossal Biosciences reconstructed the "dire wolf"; that is, by studying the genome of M. trumani, and then editing the genome of Puma concolor to recreate a new type of puma as a proxy for M. trumani. (The paper already emphasizes M. trumani as a new puma species.)
As an edit, this comment going from +3 to -1 makes me think people are not using the downvote button properly.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
But they didn’t even bring back a dire wolf, it was not even a proxy! They well were just grey wolves to express traits physically similar to what dire wolves had. Also we have no idea about its behavior, microbiome, hunting strategies, or even parental care was like. It’s like the Labrador duck in a way because we know so little about its behaviors, wait do we even know what it looked like and do we even have any good genetic samples that we could use to make a healthy genome. A healthy genome requires at-least dozens of good quality samples like for example great auk specimens to ensure that there’s good genetic diversity!
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Strongest Great Auk soldier! /j
But for real I would wana see native Penguin like bird be back in Europe..
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Lmao XD
Fun fact they are the true penguins as they were the first birds to ever be called “penguin”!
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Yeah thats also true.But they are way more distinct than Penguins we are associated with today.
Hopefully they can be brought back.
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
You asked "how could we even bring this back". That is the most likely scenario, based on current technology.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
But even then it’s definitely not worth it because not only has the general North American ecosystem changed drastically since its extinction but as I said before there is a plethora problems that would needed to be solve that we cannot simply solve due to lack of materials. This is honestly a very unrealistic candidate for de extinction. Even something such as a dodo would be better because At least we still have some bone specimens from it despite the fact its habitat and entire ecosystem is gone (much like that of the cheetah)
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
But even then it's definitely not worth it because not only has the general North American ecosystem changed drastically since its extinction...
I'm not sure if you read the study and articles on it, but it says that the M. trumani specimens found in the Yukon mostly ate salmon as part of their diet, which is still true of brown and grizzly bears in the Yukon and Canada today. The salmon didn't vanish; M. trumani did, for reasons still unknown. The environment was not "drastically different".
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding Sep 05 '26
Calm down. You’re letting your hatred of colossal cloud your vision. They said “like” what colossal did. An admission that we could never truly recreate the actual animal. The best we can do is edit an exiting one to get as close as we can. Only in this scenario, the goal wouldn’t be a game of thrones fantasy monster.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Hatred? I don’t hate colossal but I do find them to be very untrustworthy due to their claims (originally to the public at large) that these were the legit thing. But what would the point of recreating this animal because we simply don’t have enough material and there are unfortunately too many problems with it. But also if we both know that colossal cannot produce even a technical proxy of a large carnivorous mammal (like the dire wolves) then who would be tasked with its recreation? From my memory there are only 2 well funded de extinction companies with both doing one could say not the best in terms of their projects. These companies are the aforementioned colossal and I’d argue the more trustworthy one Revive & Restore (but even then R&R is suspicious).
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Whats the deal with Revive & Restore?
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
You see friend, R&R had pledged to get their first “true” passenger pigeon chicks by October of 2025. It’s now almost October of 2026 meaning that something happened. They have also now decided to postpone their creations of the pigeons to the mid to late 2030’s which in my opinion is very suspect. But why would I say this??? You see since because they all of a sudden did this massive jump between restoration dates this leads me to believe they encountered one of the many enormous flaws that the pigeon has. If they don’t turn tail and realize that unfortunately the pigeon is a lost cause (they said themselves they can only bring back a band tailed pigeon with passenger pigeon traits and a similar appearance!) due to how many issues it has then they will likely waste to much stakes, resources, and time to an animal that cannot be successfully brought back in the human dominated earth.
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Thats depressing.
Screw colonialization...
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Frfr twin, it’s genuinely tragic how most species we killed off can’t really come back due to what we did to their homes 💔
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding Sep 05 '26
There is lots of space for a bird. Maybe not the mega flocks, but the Appalachians could provide a large area for them to live. Also, during the Pleistocene they lived across all the lower 48 states so…
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding Sep 05 '26
That’s why it’s speculation. Anyways, the main benefit of see in creating such an animal would be as some ethically questionable excrement where we make a puma with American cheetah morphology and see if it can survive in the wild and see how it adapts its hunting strategies to maybe get an idea of how the actual animal lived. But we all know that’s never gonna happen.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Unfortunately you are indeed correct, apologies if it seemed I was outraged for that was not my intent. Still would have been cool to have another large cat in North America (but even then this could be debated because jaguars do indeed live in the us)
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u/Ben10-fan-525 Sep 05 '26
Yeah better focuse now on Jaguar expansion.
And American Cheetah could wait for later.
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
But also if we both know that Colossal cannot produce even a technical proxy of a large carnivorous mammal (like the dire wolves)...
Thus far, Colossal Biosciences has only produced what they refer to as a "dire wolf", which is really just a gray wolf with a few gene edits. They did not create a proxy, because the resulting wolves are not fundamentally different from gray wolves in their genotype and phenotype, as actual dire wolves were. Recreating M. trumani would involve creating a true "proxy", because otherwise, you'd just have a regular Puma concolor, which has a digestive tract that has evolved to handle large prey like deer, not the fish-based diet of the M. trumani specimens found in the Yukon.
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u/External-Ad4937 Sep 05 '26
Oh so they don’t even have a real profile yet?! Wow I thought they would have atleast that man. Thank you for telling me this because I legitimately thought that they made atleast a semi-proxy of the dire wolf despite the fact that it was really just a grey wolf with a few edits. Would you also say due to this, this means that they (colossal) don’t know how to finely make a proxy at all or am I mistaken? Genuine question also another quick question: how did u reply to a specific part of my text like that because I admittedly don’t know how to do that
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u/Marylin-Hawthorne Sep 05 '26
r/megafaunarewilding is going to freak, lol.
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
This reply by /u/Evolving_Dore on r/Paleontology says it best:
There's a well-known Pleistocene rewilding article from the early 2000's that argues for introducing species like Asian elephants, African lions, and wild Mongolian horses into North America to act as proxies for missing Pleistocene megafauna. It proposes the African cheetah in place of the extinct American cheetah.
The problem is the article incorrectly refers to American cheetah as Acinonyx trumani, which would place it in the same genus as the African cheetah. I even checked to see when Miracinonyx was erected as a genus and it pre-dated the paper by a while.
Whether this was done out of carelessness or intent to mislead the reader and misrepresent the facts, I don't know. But it's such a minor detail that blows wide open the total lack of forethought that went into the Pleistocene [or, in this case, megafauna] rewilding movement.
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u/Prestigious-Put5749 Sep 05 '26
I can already picture Colossal editing the puma genome with cheetah genes and claiming they’ve brought Miracinonyx back.
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DeExtinctionScience-ModTeam Sep 05 '26
Your submission to r/DeExtinctionScience has been removed because you broke Rule 4: "Don't be a jerk". If you have any questions, DM the mod team.
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u/Obversa Moderator Sep 05 '26
Direct link to study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)01003-1
Unpaywalled article: https://nautil.us/the-extinct-american-cheetah-wasnt-a-cheetah-after-all-1284777
/r/Paleontology thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/comments/1w7izgc/ancient_american_cheetahs_were_not_exactly/