Free Republic

[snip] We generated a genomic time transect spanning the past 11,000 years and found that cats previously identified as carrying a F. l. lybica mtDNA clade from Neolithic and Chalcolithic southeast Europe and Anatolia, dated between 9500 and 6300 years ago, were F. silvestris wildcats whose ancestors hybridized with F. l. lybica. Ancient genomes revealed an increasing trend of African wildcat ancestry ranging from 9 to 34% eastward, from Bulgaria to central Anatolia.The earliest cat belonging to the genetic cluster of as F. l. lybica and F. catus in Europe originates from the site of Genoni, in Sardinia (Italy), and...

The mysterious bay cat, also known as the Bornean cat, is a wild cat endemic to the Indonesian island of Borneo. Adults grow as long as 50-60 cm with a 30 – 40 cm long tail, and can weigh over 3.5 kg. Until now, this species had been recorded on camera traps just a handful of times in Borneo and was only photographed in the wild for the first time in 2003. But more images of this animal have been captured than ever before, together with evidence of four other wild cat species – the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi),...