Puma yagouaroundi

The jaguarundi ; or is a wild cat native to the Americas. Its range extends from central Argentina in the south and much of South America east of the Andes, through Central America, and into northern Mexico. It occurred in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in south Texas as recently as the early 1990s but is now believed to be extirpated from the US. The jaguarundi is a medium-sized cat of slender build. Its coloration is uniform with two color morphs, gray and red. It has an elongated body, with relatively short legs, a small, narrow head, small, round ears, a short snout, and a long tail, resembling mustelids in these respects. It is about twice as large as a domestic cat, reaching nearly 360 mm (14 in) at the shoulder, and weighs 3.5–7 kg (7.7–15.4 lb).

Puma yagouaroundi

Vassil · CC0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
jaguarundiPBDB
Sits inside
PumaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Puma
Life habit
scansorialPBDB, for Felidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 4 of 7 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 3 of 7 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 0.7 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

7 occurrences of Puma yagouaroundi on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

7 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Puma yagouaroundi and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Puma yagouaroundi and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

179 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Puma yagouaroundi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

7 references

Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Puma yagouaroundi

Credit
Vassil
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Puma yagouaroundi was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itPuma through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Geoffroy 1803)