The Origins Of Puma Was Never What We Thought — Ancient DNA Finally Revealed The Truth Angel Reese [7UT0ZEdFFOy]

In 2000, a genetic study of pumas across North and South America produced a result that rewrote the prehistory of the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western Hemisphere. The analysis found that pumas living today in North America from Canada to the Florida Everglades show levels of genetic diversity so low that the entire population appears to descend from a single small founding group. The original North American pumas, the ones that ranged across the continent alongside mammoths, horses, and giant ground sloths, went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 years ago. The pumas living in North America today are not their descendants. They are descendants of a South American population that expanded northward and recolonized an vancouver vs fc dallas empty continent after the original inhabitants were gone. North America's apex feline predator is, genetically, a South American animal.

Key Studies david lammy Referenced:

- Johnson et al. (2006). The Late Miocene radiation of modern Felidae: A genetic assessment. Science.

- Culver et barletta savoia al. (2000). Genomic ancestry of the American puma (Puma concolor). Journal of Heredity.

- Barnett et al. (2005). Evolution of the extinct sabretooths and the American cheetah-like cat. Current Biology.

- Saremi et al. (2019). Puma genomes from North and South America provide insights into the genomic consequences of inbreeding. Nature Communications.

- Hedrick et al. (2001). Genetic rescue for inbreeding depression in the Florida panther. Animal Conservation.

- Janecka et al. (2012). Population structure in the mountain lion. Conservation Genetics.

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