<P> In 2005, the authors of Mammal Species of the World recognized A. j. raineyi and A. j. velox as valid taxa, and considered A. j. ngorongorensis synonymous with A. j. raineyi . </P> <P> In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the Cat Specialist Group subsumed A. j. raineyi and A. j. velox to A. j. jubatus, thus recognizing only one subspecies in East and Southern Africa . </P> <P> The earliest African cheetah fossils from the early Pleistocene have been found in the lower beds of the Olduvai Gorge site in northern Tanzania . </P> <P> Not much was known about the East African cheetah's evolutionary story, although at first, the East and Southern African cheetahs were thought to be identical as the genetic distance between the two subspecies is low . In the 1990s, it appeared from a DNA research that the East African cheetah is a separate subspecies differing from the Southern African cheetah . </P>

The cheetah ranges through most of this eastern country