The Second-Fastest Land Animal Still Runs From Ghosts

There’s a surprising Pleistocene holdover still running around the American West

Joelle Marlin
6 min readSep 13, 2022

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If this were a sabertooth, dire wolf, bear, anything else, they would be safe, speeding out of sight before the animal could hope to reach top speed. But this creature is the subject of their nightmares, the cold chill down their spines…

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Joelle Marlin

Fossil enthusiast, caver, lover of nature, and hobbyist paleoartist, here to share my passion for the fascinating and obscure!