Yoshi (genus)

Yoshi is an extinct genus of machairodontine sabertooth cat in the tribe Metailurini. Its fossils were described from Turolian deposits from the Miocene epoch of the Balkan Peninsula in 2014 and specimens from China once thought to belong to Metailurus. The name comes from that of the lead author's pet cat. It has been described as potentially being synonymous with Metailurus, though this is difficult to confirm at present. The type specimen is a skull that bears remarkable similarities with the modern cheetah. Yoshi is intermediate in size between a lynx and cougar, and based on several as-yet unpublished skeletons, may have had a similar lifestyle to the cheetah, being better built for speed and fast pursuit than most other machairodonts, which were more suited to ambush and hunting large, relatively slow moving animals.

The genus was named after the pet cat of Nikolai Spassov, one of the authors of the paper that described it.

Taxonomic History
In 1862, Hensel described the species Machairodus parvulus based poorly preserved skulls from Pikermi, Greece; it was reassigned to a new genus Pikermia as Pikermia parvula by Miklos Kretzoi in 1938. In that same paper he proposed to include Metailurus minor as a member of another genus, Parapseudailurus; but Thenius in 1951 and Beaumont in 1961 considered M. parvulus and M. minor to be the same taxon with M. minor as the junior synonym of M. parvulus.

A decision which was followed by later researchers until the paper detailing the new genus Yoshi which, among other decisions, declared M. parvulus, and the genus Pikermia erected for it, a nomen dubium due to the generally fragmented nature of all material assigned to the species.

In 2022, two new species Yoshi faie and Yoshi yongdengensis were proposed based on fossils found in northeastern China. And in 2023, a fifth species Yoshi obscura, which had previously been assigned to the genera Metailurus and Felis amongst others, was added, along with a suggestion that Tchadailurus adei be included in the genus Yoshi.