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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".
Proailurus is believed to have evolved from earlier ailuroid carnivorans such as Stenogale and Haplogale. [8] It is a likely ancestor of Pseudaelurus , which lived 20–10 million years ago, and probably gave rise to the major felid lines, including the extinct machairodontines and the extant felines and pantherines , although the phylogeny of ...
Nimravidae is an extinct family of carnivorans, sometimes known as false saber-toothed cats, whose fossils are found in North America and Eurasia.Not considered to belong to the true cats (family Felidae), the nimravids are generally considered closely related and classified as a distinct family in the suborder Feliformia.
The Iberian lynx is one of the most endangered cat species in the world today. ©tony mills/Shutterstock.com The post The History and Evolution of Europe’s Wild Cats appeared first on A-Z Animals .
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]
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.
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.
Named Gondwanax paraisensis, the four-legged reptile species was roughly the size of a small dog with a long tail, or about 1 meter (39 inches) long and weighing between 3 and 6 kg (7 to 13 pounds ...