Giant cheetah-Acinonyx Pardinensis

[Acinonyx sp.]

Important remarks on the evolution of the giant cheetah from Cherin et al 2014:

"Evolutionary relationships among all these forms, as well as between Old and New World forms, are still cloudy. At least two taxa were suggested to be the possible ancestor of cheetahs: the puma-like cat Puma pardoides from Eurasia (Kurtén, 1976) and Panthera crassidens from Africa (Petter and Howell, 1976). The latter however should not be considered because the holotype was demonstrated to be a composite specimen (Turner, 1990). The American cheetah M. inexpectatus probably reached North America in the Late Pliocene and could be ancestral to both M. trumani and the extant cougar Puma concolor (Van Valkenburgh et al., 1990). Miracinonyx inexpectatus and A. pardinensis seem to appear approximately at the same age. Although the origin of A. pardinensis is still unclear, Hemmer et al. (2011) supposed that European and Asian forms followed a separate evolutionary history during the Early Pleistocene: while in the West A. p. pardinensis was probably a chronological successor of A. p. arvernensis during the early to middle Villafranchian transition, in the East the primitive A. p. linxiaensis was substituted by A. p. pleistocaenicus, which invaded Europe in conjunction with the climatic aridification at the beginning of the latest Villafranchian (Spassov, 2011)."

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 I will post most more weight data on pardinensis than I have before very soon. Reply