During the Ice Age, cheetahs, pronghorns and humans shared this land.

Millenia later, the pronghorn carry on the cheetah’s legacy.

From Michael Drake, homeowner of the Bryce Widom American cheetah/pronghorn antelope mural at Broadway & Cedar/Dellwood in Boulder, Colorado:

14,000 years ago, cheetahs roamed the plains of Colorado. Standing here at the end of the Ice Age, you would still recognize the Flatirons rising above you and many of the plants and birds around you. But you might be surprised by many of the mammals that called this place home not so long ago!

This was a time of incredible mammal diversity and massive body sizes that helped mammals survive the cold temperatures. In the plains of North America, giant sloths, towering mastodons, and camels would have been a common sight.

Among these unfamiliar animals, though, you would also see herds of pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) – the same species that still inhabit the plains today. Back then, the pronghorn was the favorite prey of another incredible animal, the American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani).

The American cheetah had many of the same physical adaptations for swift running, such as long limbs, a short snout, and semi-retractable claws, as the modern cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), which can reach speeds up to 70 miles per hour. It’s very likely that the American cheetah was similarly fleet-footed and used its speed to run down prey in the plains of North America.

To this day, scientists are unsure how closely related the American cheetah is to the modern-day cheetah. As North America and Eurasia were once connected, it’s possible that the cheetah lineage evolved in North America and then crossed into Eurasia where they gave rise to the modern cheetah.

Conversely, a puma-like common ancestor that the cheetahs shared could have crossed from North America to Eurasia and both lineages could have developed adaptations for speed independently.

Though we lack conclusive evidence to determine what really happened, we know from well preserved fossils that American cheetahs were running down prey in North America for about 2.5 million years.

So why did the American cheetah disappear?

At the end of the Ice Age, as the Pleistocene ended and the modern Holocene epoch began, large mammals all around the world died off, in what is known as the Quaternary Extinction. At this time, the global climate was rapidly warming up just as modern humans were expanding to every continent. Large mammals, particularly carnivores with their small populations and slow life cycles, were unable to adapt to the combined effects of a warming planet and the new hunting methods of tool-using humans and quickly went extinct.

Such was the case for the American cheetah, which made its last hunt about 12,000 years ago. Though a cheetah has not killed a pronghorn in thousands of years, their memory lives on in the adaptations that pronghorns carry to this day. The pronghorn can run up to 55 mph, have a 320 degree field of vision, and are nearly unable to jump - all traits that they still carry from millennia of being chased by cheetahs across these plains.

As you stand here now, think about how this place has changed in 14,000 years. Long before gold brought prospectors to Boulder and even before the Arapaho people called this place híí3einóón níit-bíí3ihí-3i’ hoh’éni’ (buffalos where they graze on the mountain), humans stood here and watched cheetahs hunt.

Who will stand here again in the future and what will their world look like?

The Story of this Mural

The idea for this project began in 2018 when I was teaching Mammalogy at CU Boulder. One evening I was sitting by the fire and describing extinct animals to my roommate when we realized that the fence in front of the house would be a good place to teach people about wildlife.

Initially, we thought about putting up a marine reptile (from when Boulder was part of the Western Interior Seaway) but realized that an ancient sea-beast might be too esoteric. Eventually, we decided that the pairing of an extinct cheetah with an extant pronghorn would be the perfect bridge between modern and ancient wildlife, and thus the cheetah mural was born. This idea then sat in the back of my head for two years as I realized that I had no idea how to make a mural.

By chance, in 2020 I met Valdon Ross, a local mural artist, who introduced me to City of Boulder’s Creative Neighborhoods: Murals Program. The program generously provided a grant for this project and, most importantly, paired me with the incredibly talented Bryce Widom. With Bryce’s creative insight, the idea for the mural crystalized into what you see now.

The mural was finished in November 2020, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Learn more about the City of Boulder’s Creative Neighborhoods: Murals program.

If you would like to learn about more extinct mammals, explore some of these amazing species:

Marine sloths that ate kelp and were hunted by whales.

Saber-toothed marsupials of South America.

The 20-ton rhino that may have been the largest land mammal ever.

The ‘walking whales’ that split from hippos and gave rise to modern whales.

The 3,000-pound bovid that we domesticated (twice!) into cows 10,500 years ago.

The first mammal to go extinct from modern climate change in 2019.