There are a lot that paleontologists who know about this surprisingly elusive big cat, and much more they hope to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d love to know exactly what it was doing,\u201d said Julie Meachen, a mammalian biologist at Des Moines University in Iowa. \u201cI’d love to see it in action, how it caught its prey, and how it’s the same and different than the modern cheetah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ll never know for sure, but we have really good guesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/American-cheetah-image_11656e-Miracinonyx-trumani-5.3.26.jpg\")
The “American cheetah” chased after pronghorn at the end of the Ice Age in what would become Wyoming, but disappeared thousands of years ago. The best specimens of this big cat have been found 85 feet down in Wyoming\u2019s Natural Trap Cave. Now extinct, above is an artist’s conception of what an American cheetah may have looked like. Cheetah-Like Cat<\/p>\n
Just like the pronghorn isn\u2019t really an antelope, Miracinonyx isn\u2019t really a cheetah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meachen said the most accurate way to describe it is as \u201ca cheetah-like cat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually most closely related to the living mountain lion,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re sister species that are most closely related to the jaguar, and the three of them are distantly related to the cheetah in Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been known as the American cheetah because of its skeletal similarities to the extant African cheetah.<\/p>\n
Miracinonyx had long, slender legs, a shorter skull, and retractable claws like a modern cheetah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also wasn\u2019t as robust as a mountain lion or its prehistoric cat contemporaries, the American lion and\u00a0the saber-toothed Smilodon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meachen said a fully grown Miracinonyx would probably be as big as today’s largest mountain lion but would outwardly resemble a cheetah, with its elongated legs and body.<\/p>\n While it’s superficially similar to cheetahs, the skeleton of Miracinonyx has significant differences that would have impacted its mobility and behavior, particularly how it hunted.<\/p>\n \u201cAfrican cheetahs are so specialized for running that they have functionally given up the use of their forelimbs as a prey-killing tool,\u201d Meachen said. \u201cThey use a dewclaw to trip their prey and then go for a bite to the throat.\u00a0<\/p>\n “They usually don\u2019t touch their prey with their paws at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Miracinonyx\u2019s bones indicate it would have been able to use its forelimbs for subduing its prey, the hunting style of most big cats.<\/p>\n Even so, Meachen said Miracinonyx was undoubtedly a cursorial animal, adapted for running.\u00a0<\/p>\n That means, like the modern cheetah, it was a specialized pursuit predator.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was running to chase its prey, more so than a leopard or a jaguar,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would have eaten animals that were going to run away, so it would have done quite a bit of chasing.\u201d<\/p>\n Meachen is currently working on several studies on the biology and paleoecology of Miracinonyx.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of those studies deals directly with its diet, so she could only give \u201ca teaser\u201d of what the American cheetah-like cat would have been chasing and consuming.<\/p>\n \u201cI do know what they’re eating, but I can’t give away everything,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat I will say is that it wasn\u2019t eating the same thing in every environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Previous research from specimens recovered in Natural Trap Cave indicates that prehistoric pronghorn was on Miracinonyx\u2019s menu, but not exclusively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meachen said the extinct cat had \u201ca Catholic diet\u201d of prehistoric hoofed mammals.<\/p>\n \u201cOur published isotope data (from the teeth of Miracinonyx) shows it was eating pronghorn, sheep, and other ungulates,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are the animals you\u2019d expect them to eat at Natural Trap Cave.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of diet, there\u2019s another possible similarity between Miracinonyx and the modern cheetah. The prehistoric cheetah-like cat might have been an easy mark for theft.<\/p>\n Kleptoparasitism is when one animal steals food from another. In modern-day Africa, cheetahs are frequently bullied off kills by lions, hyenas, and other carnivores because they\u2019re not strong enough to defend or compete for carcasses.<\/p>\n Meachen said there\u2019s no direct evidence of kleptoparasitism in the Pleistocene, but it\u2019s entirely possible that it occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n One clue comes from similar isotope studies of American lion teeth, also recovered from Natural Trap Cave.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a large overlap in what those two species were eating,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don’t have any data to support or refute the idea, but it\u2019s possible the American lion was kleptoparasitizing kills from the American cheetah-like cat.\u201d<\/p>\n There might have been plenty of kills to steal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cheetahs have a higher success rate than nearly all African cats, so Miracinonyx might have been just as successful.<\/p>\n The first Miracinonyx fossils, a handful of teeth, were found in a limestone cave near Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania in 1869.\u00a0<\/p>\n While its fossils have been found across North America, from the Yukon to Mexico, it\u2019s still a relatively rare find.<\/p>\n The best specimens, including partially articulated skeletons, have come from Wyoming\u2019s Natural Trap Cave.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 85-foot-deep pit cave is regarded as one of the best Late Pleistocene sites in the world.<\/p>\n Much of Meachen\u2019s Miracinonyx research has focused on specimens excavated in the sandy bottom of the perpetually cold cave in the Bighorn Mountains.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to her research, the density of fossils in Natural Trap Cave gives more insight into the biology and behavior of Miracinonyx.<\/p>\n For one thing, it reveals another major difference between this cheetah-like cat and the modern cheetah.<\/p>\n \u201cThe African cheetah runs mostly on a flatter, savannah ecosystem,\u201d she said. \u201cThe American cheetah-like cat was adapted to many kinds of heterogeneous ecosystems. They are much better adapted for running over many different types of terrain.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bighorn Mountains haven\u2019t changed much in the last 20,000 years. That\u2019s enough to conclusively say Miracinonyx lived and hunted in mountainous, high desert terrain.<\/p>\n In fact, that\u2019s why so many Miracinonyx fossils have been found in Natural Trap Cave. It\u2019s where many of these predators met a grisly end.<\/p>\n \u201cNatural Trap Cave is an open habitat,\u201d Meachen said. \u201cIt basically caught running animals, carnivores and herbivores, that fell into the cave. We have quite a few carnivores down there, more than you would get by chance in that environment.\u201d<\/p>\n That means the fossils in Natural Trap Cave came from animals that died after plummeting into its depths, possibly while fleeing from predators or pursuing prey.<\/p>\n The sandy sediment, constant temperatures below 50 degrees, and 98% humidity ensured their bones were immaculately preserved at the bottom, often still fresh enough for intact collagen and mitochondrial DNA to be retained and sampled.<\/p>\n Around 10,000 years ago, most of North and South America\u2019s large mammals went extinct within the same short period of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Every population of mammoths, lions, horses, giant armadillos, and ground sloths quickly and fatally collapsed as the world warmed up,\u00a0humans arrived<\/a>, and the Pleistocene ended.<\/p>\n Miracinonyx might have been gone long before that. To date, the youngest specimens have been dated to around 16,000 years old.<\/p>\n There are many theories explaining why and how these extinctions occurred, but the most widely accepted explanation is climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the Ice Age ended, the habitats these large animals needed disappeared.<\/p>\n Meachen has been studying the decline of these Ice Age animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the many papers she\u2019s working on specifically deals with an important factor that might have contributed to the extinction of Miracinonyx.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that it went extinct with all the other big carnivores at the end of the Ice Age, but I\u2019ll hint that we now have some idea of Miracinonyx\u2019s population size,\u201d she said. \u201cIf it had a low population density to begin with, any kind of extinction pressure, whether it’s loss of habitat or loss of prey, would have affected it greatly.\u201d<\/p>\n That might be an eerie analogy to the plight of modern-day cheetahs. The two biggest factors cited for their declining numbers are habitat loss and fragmented, low-density populations.<\/p>\n Its Own Cat<\/p>\n Last summer, Meachen led a team of students and other scientists into the depths of Natural Trap Cave to excavate fossils.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/American-cheetah-IMG_20751-5.3.26.jpg\")
A fully articulated Miracinonyx \u201chand\u201d (all five metacarpals, without toes) excavated in 2025. (Courtesy Julie Meachen)A Catholic Diet<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/American-cheetah-UW-53107_Miracinonyx-trumani_dentary_L_DMU_P4300276-5.3.26.JPG\")
A fossilzed jaw and teeth of an American cheetah found in Wyoming’s Natural Trap Cave in 2014 or 2015. (Courtesy Julie Meachen)Mountain Mass Mortality<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/American-cheetah-UW-57736_Miracinonyx_ulna_L_DMU_102913-5.3.26.jpg\")
A fossilzed bone of an American cheetah found in Wyoming’s Natural Trap Cave in 2014 or 2015. (Courtesy Julie Meachen)A Fast Exit<\/p>\n