Carl Linnaeus first described the puma in 1771.
Linnaeus gave the animal the scientific name Felis concolor in 1771. His description was based on a long-tailed cat from Brazil, and the authority citation in modern taxonomy remains “(Linnaeus, 1771).” The parentheses indicate that the species has since been moved out of the genus in which Linnaeus originally placed it.
The species is now called Puma concolor. William Jardine transferred it to the genus Puma in 1834, creating the name used in modern zoology. The puma is also known by regional common names including cougar, mountain lion, catamount, and panther.
Linnaeus’s original classification did not settle every later question about the animal. After his description, dozens of specimens were proposed as separate subspecies, but genetic research later showed that many of those distinctions were too weak to maintain. The date 1771 refers to the first scientific description, not the first human knowledge of the puma, which was already familiar to Indigenous peoples of the Americas.