Ancient DNA shows the extinct American cheetah was really a puma

Maybe you learned that thousands of years ago, a now-extinct species of cheetah sped across the plains of North America. New genetic evidence shows that these animals weren't cheetahs, but were more closely related to American pumas. Paleontologists had been fooled by the animal's morphological similarity to African cheetahs, but it turns out that similarity was just an instance of convergent evolution. — Read the rest The post Ancient DNA shows the extinct American cheetah was really a puma appeared first on Boing Boing.