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A new study, "Range and diet diversity in the Pleistocene American 'cheetah,' Miracinonyx trumani," was published in the scientific journal Current Biology on Friday. Using the tiniest of bones, including some found in Wyoming's Natural Trap Cave, the diet and DNA of the American cheetah-like cat have been revealed in astonishing detail... "It's actually most closely related to the living mountain lion, and those are both sister species most closely related to the jaguarundi," she said. "The three of them together are distantly related to modern cheetah."... Some of the best Late Pleistocene specimens [various species] ever found have come...

ASSOCIATED PRESS Biologists hope they've isolated the germ leading to the deaths of thousands of bighorns BOISE, Idaho -- Biologists at Washington State University say they have isolated a bacterium that may have contributed to the deaths of thousands of bighorn sheep in the West in the past five decades. The biologists say they found mycoplasma ovipneumoniae in tissue taken from dying lambs captured in Hells Canyon -- a chasm that borders Idaho, Oregon and Washington. They say it inhibits the ability of hairlike structures in the sheep's airways to eliminate bacteria that lead to pneumonia -- a leading cause...

Wednesday, August 13, 2003 Intern Uses Crackers To Trap Bighorns for Trip to Arizona By Jeff JonesJournal Staff Writer    GOLD HILL— New Mexico Game and Fish Department intern Fernando Clemente Jr. has a new nickname: The Sheep Whisperer.     The second day of a $90,000, five-day bighorn sheep trapping operation northeast of Taos was stalling Tuesday morning when department big game program coordinator Darrel Weybright got a bright idea.     Why not send the intern up the side of a mountain to see what he could do with the herd of sheep on the distant skyline?     Clemente, a 28-year-old...