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Feliform evolutionary timeline. All modern carnivorans, including cats, evolved from miacoids, which existed from approximately 66 to 33 million years ago.There were other earlier cat-like species but Proailurus (meaning "before the cat"; also called "Leman's Dawn Cat"), which appeared about 30 million years ago, is generally considered the first "true cat".
Results of phylogenetic research shows that the wild members of this genus evolved through sympatric or parapatric speciation, whereas the domestic cat evolved through artificial selection. [29] The domestic cat and its closest wild ancestor are diploid and both possess 38 chromosomes [ 30 ] and roughly 20,000 genes.
Current taxonomy tends to treat F. silvestris, F. lybica, F. catus, [4] and F. bieti as different species. A 2007 study of feline mitochondrial DNA and microsatellites of approximately 1,000 cats from many different regions (including Africa, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and the Middle East) showed 5 genetic lineages of the wildcat population. [5]
Today, however, much of this natural habitat has completely disappeared, along with the largest of the cats. There are currently three wild species of felines living on the continent. European Wildcat
Pseudaelurus is a prehistoric cat that lived in Europe, Asia and North America in the Miocene between approximately twenty and eight million years ago. It is considered to be a paraphyletic grade ancestral to living felines and pantherines as well as the extinct machairodonts (saber-tooths), and is a successor to Proailurus.
Felis lunensis was one of the first modern Felis species, appearing around 2.5 million years ago in the Pliocene. Fossil specimens of F. lunensis have been recovered in Italy and Hungary . [ 1 ] Fossil evidence suggests the modern European wildcat Felis silvestris may have evolved from F. lunensis during the Middle Pleistocene. [ 2 ]
Dinosaurs evolved from more primitive reptiles in the aftermath of Earth's biggest mass-extinction event caused by extreme volcanism at the end of the Permian Period about 252 million years ago.
The Corsican wildcat is an isolated cat population of uncertain taxonomic status that has been variously regarded as a separate species of its own (as Felis reyi), a subspecies of the African wildcat (as Felis lybica reyi), or a population of feral house cats (Felis catus) that were introduced to Corsica around the beginning of the first millennium.