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Description
Phylogeny of the pantherine cats. Believed to have diverged from their common ancestor with the Felinae during the Late Miocene, though the fossil record is extraordinarily spotty, if not non-existant before the Pliocene. The earliest known speciations seem to have taken place in Central Asia with Africa being the birth place for Panthera itself. While they were previously not believed to have reached large body sizes until some time late in the mid-Pliocene, the presence of the lion-sized Pachypanthera piriyai from the Late Miocene of Thailand suggest that the pantherinae might always have had a propensity to grow towards the status of apex predators as most of them are today.

Primarily based on:
Mazák, 2011 (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic… )
Chatar, 2022 (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10… )
Hemmer, 2023 (link.springer.com/article/10.1… )
Hemmer, 2023 again (link.springer.com/article/10.1… )
With some inferences by me.

Some comments:
Palaeopanthera includes the species most often called "Panthera" blytheae & "Miopanthera" pamiri. Panthera zdanskyi is regarded as synonymous with Panthera palaeosinensis and Panthera youngi & Panthera fossilis might be synonyms of Panthera spelaea. Panthera balamaoides was excluded for probably being a misidentified ursid, and Panthera dhokpathanensis was excluded for lack of phylogentic data. No phylogentic analysis beyond placement in Pantherinae incertae sedis has been performed for Pachypanthera.

As for the more unorthodox or unusual placements in this tree: Panthera gombaszoegensis (God that's a mouthful), the so-called "European Jaguar" was found to be a stem-tiger, not a jaguar by Chatar (2022) and Panthera shawi seems to represent a population of Panthera around the P. leo-P. pardus split, so I felt I had no choice but to but it in a polytomy with those two. Panthera principalis is very recently described, but is accroding to Hemmer (2023) probably the earliest diverging member of Panthera.

I wonder where the actual stem-jaguars could be...

Made in TreeGraph 2.0

Description
Phylogeny of the pantherine cats. Believed to have diverged from their common ancestor with the Felinae during the Late Miocene, though the fossil record is extraordinarily spotty, if not non-existant before the Pliocene. The earliest known speciations seem to have taken place in Central Asia with Africa being the birth place for Panthera itself. While they were previously not believed to have reached large body sizes until some time late in the mid-Pliocene, the presence of the lion-sized Pachypanthera piriyai from the Late Miocene of Thailand suggest that the pantherinae might always have had a propensity to grow towards the status of apex predators as most of them are today.

Primarily based on:
Mazák, 2011 (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic… )
Chatar, 2022 (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10… )
Hemmer, 2023 (link.springer.com/article/10.1… )
Hemmer, 2023 again (link.springer.com/article/10.1… )
With some inferences by me.

Some comments:
Palaeopanthera includes the species most often called "Panthera" blytheae & "Miopanthera" pamiri. Panthera zdanskyi is regarded as synonymous with Panthera palaeosinensis and Panthera youngi & Panthera fossilis might be synonyms of Panthera spelaea. Panthera balamaoides was excluded for probably being a misidentified ursid, and Panthera dhokpathanensis was excluded for lack of phylogentic data. No phylogentic analysis beyond placement in Pantherinae incertae sedis has been performed for Pachypanthera.

As for the more unorthodox or unusual placements in this tree: Panthera gombaszoegensis (God that's a mouthful), the so-called "European Jaguar" was found to be a stem-tiger, not a jaguar by Chatar (2022) and Panthera shawi seems to represent a population of Panthera around the P. leo-P. pardus split, so I felt I had no choice but to but it in a polytomy with those two. Panthera principalis is very recently described, but is accroding to Hemmer (2023) probably the earliest diverging member of Panthera.

I wonder where the actual stem-jaguars could be...

Made in TreeGraph 2.0