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Sabertooth tigers were no pussy cats


Ancient DNA has rewritten the big-cat family tree of sabertooth tigers, pumas and cheetahs (Image: iStockphoto)

DNA taken from the teeth of ancient sabertooth cats show they were cousins of modern cats but not direct ancestors, scientists say.

And they also shot down a theory that cheetahs may have originally evolved from a similar-looking North American ancestor.

"Our results show that the sabertooths diverge early and are not closely related to any living cats," write Ross Barnett of the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre in Oxford and colleagues in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.

Sabertoothed cats went extinct about 13,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age, as did many other large cats that once roamed the North American plains.

These include the Yukon scimitartoothed cat, the American lion-like cat or Panthera atrox and a cheetah-like cat called Miracinonyx trumani.

The only large cats that survived in the Western Hemisphere were the puma and the jaguar.

Separate family

Sabertooths have been placed in a separate family, Machairodontinae, from modern cats such as lions and tigers.

The researchers, which include Professor Alan Cooper from Australia's University of Adelaide, managed to get some DNA from a sabertooth's bones, a bit from a related Yukon scimitartoothed cat and a sample from Miracinonyx bones found in Wyoming.

Their analysis shows that the sabertooth cats diverged early on from the ancestors of modern cats and are not closely related to any living feline species.

And the cat that resembled an early cheetah was not in fact a cheetah but a relative of the modern-day puma.

"Despite its remarkable morphological similarity to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), Miracinonyx appears to have evolved from a puma-like ancestor, presumably in response to similar ecological pressures," the researchers write.

Out on the plains

In other words, it chased antelope on the rolling plains of the American Midwest just as modern cheetahs do in the African savannah.

"It has been suggested that the cheetahs originated in the New World and later migrated to the Old World," the researchers write.

"However, the mitochondrial sequence analysis together with recent fossil data suggests that they originated in the Old World and that a puma-like cat then invaded North America around six million years ago.

"Around 3.2 million years ago, this ancestor diverged into Miracinonyx and Puma, which is broadly contemporaneous with increasing prairie in North America."

Tags: palaeontology, zoology