''Leopardus vorohuensis'' is an extinct species of feline. Fossils of the species were found in the Vorohué Formation of

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and dated to the

Uquian The Uquian age is a period of geologic time (3.0–1.5 Ma) within the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs of the Neogene used more specifically with South American Land Mammal Ages. It follows the Montehermosan and precedes the Ensenadan The Ensenad ...

age of the early middle

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

. It is the earliest known cat of the ocelot lineage of neotropical cats.

Taxonomy

''Leopardus vorohuensis'' was originally described in 1983 by paleontologist

Annalisa Berta Annalisa Berta (born 23 July 1952) is an American paleontologist and professor emerita in the Department of Biology at San Diego State University. The focus of her research is the evolution and fossil history of whales and other marine mammals, a ...

, who placed it as a member of the genus ''

Felis ''Felis'' is a genus of small and medium-sized cat species native to most of Africa and south of 60° latitude in Europe and Asia to Indochina. The genus includes the domestic cat. The smallest ''Felis'' species is the black-footed cat with a he ...

''. It was later assigned to the genus ''

Leopardus ''Leopardus'' is a genus comprising eight species of small cats native to the Americas. This genus is considered the oldest branch of a genetic lineage of small cats in the Americas whose common ancestor crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia ...

'' by the

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

John Alroy John Alroy is a paleobiologist born in New York in 1966 and now residing in Sydney, Australia. Area of expertise Alroy specializes in diversity curves, speciation, and extinction of North American fossil mammals and Phanerozoic marine inver ...

after a comparative study of various feline fossil species.

References

Leopardus Prehistoric felids Pliocene mammals of South America Pleistocene mammals of South America Fossils of Argentina Fossil taxa described in 1983 {{paleo-carnivora-stub