In a cave near Arar, in the north of Saudi Arabia, they found the complete corpses of cheetahs burned naturally, and scientists are still amazed at how “impossible” it is to preserve a mammal in this way.

A scientific team exploring a cave in the far north of Saudi Arabia is expected to find more bones. Instead, they came face to face with the dead but still body of a cheetah, lying on the floor of the cave.

This discovery was so unusual that one foreign expert explained that it was something that had never been seen in the study of big cats.

New research describes seven decapitated cheetahs and the bones of 54 other animals from the Lauga cave network near the city of Arar. Their skin, limbs, and even parts of the brain are so well preserved that scientists can extract DNA and say that the remains are from about 130 years ago to about two thousand years ago, and some bones are even older.

The results show that at least two species of cheetah once roamed the Arabian Peninsula and could now guide reintroduction plans.

The discovery is unprecedented in a Saudi cave

In 2022 and 2023, a team from the National Wildlife Center explored 134 underground caves in an area of ​​about two hundred square kilometers of desert near Arar. In five of those caves they found the remains of a cheetah, and in one hollow cave they unearthed seven natural carcasses as well as many bones. Some bodies lay just a few meters from the cave entrance, others deep in the darkness.

The dead animals look surprisingly fresh for their age, with skin stretched across their ribs, legs bent toward their bodies, and cloudy eyes staring into the dust. Paleontologist Joan Madurell-Malapeira of the University of Florence, who was not part of the project, said the find was “something I’ve never seen” in large carnivores. He and other experts point out that naturally occurring big cats were not on the scientific radar until now.

How desert caves turned cheetahs into natural mummies

When an animal dies, bacteria and insects usually break down the soft tissues within a few days, especially in hot climates. In these caves, the constant cool temperatures and very dry air slowed down the process so that the skin, muscles, and even the internal organs dried up instead of rotting. Anyone who has ever been in an air-conditioned room from the heat of the desert knows how quickly the humidity can disappear, and the caves made these corpses dry the same way.

In order for such large animals to stay safe, they also had to escape from hyenas, vultures or foxes that often clean the bodies on the water. Study author Ahmed Boug said in a press statement that finding cheetahs in this condition in this part of the world is “absolutely unprecedented.”

Similar natural carcasses in caves have only been recorded in a few other carnivores, such as the extinct Tasmanian tiger, which is why the authors consider this cheetah to be somewhat unique in modern science.

Ancient DNA reveals lost cheetah family tree

Because the bodies were so well preserved, the researchers were able to extract genes from the carcasses and bones, something that had only been achieved with naturally occurring big cats. They sequenced the complete genomes for three individuals and compared them to modern cheetahs from across Africa and Asia to see where the ancient animals fit into the family tree. Simply put, DNA allows scientists to match each mother with her closest living relatives.

The oldest cheetahs from the caves were closely related to the cheetahs living today in northwest Africa, while the youngest groups of mummies with the highly endangered Asiatic cheetah still live in Iran.

That part changes everything. It shows that at least two different species have shared the Arabian landscape for thousands of years, giving architects more options when designing restoration programs, Boug says.

What does this mean for Arabian cheetahs today?

Cheetahs once ranged across much of Africa and large parts of western and southern Asia, including the Arabian Peninsula, but have now disappeared from ninety percent of that area. Only a few thousand remain in the country, mainly in southern and eastern Africa, along with a small Asian population in Iran. For preservationists, that decline means that every piece of reliable history becomes valuable.

The cheetahs in the caves give Saudi officials a rare, concrete guide to which species once lived there and how long they persisted, supporting a recovery program that combines breeding and habitat restoration.

Land planners can now compare future editions with bloodlines that once inhabited the land, rather than guessing from modern maps. At the end of the day, anyone hoping to see cheetahs running again across the Arabian sands is left with a simple question, will we use this window into the past to build a safe future for them.

A large study was published in Communications Earth & Environment.