When archaeologists unearthed small cat bones in China dating back some 5,400 years , they figured cats had been hanging out in early Chinese farming settlements since the Neolithic Period .

Now, a sweeping new DNA study has confirmed what earlier studies had suspected : that those felines weren't typical domestic cats, but a different species altogether.

A team led by evolutionary scientists at Peking University analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of 22 feline bones from 14 sites in China, across 5,400 years of history. Intriguingly, domestic cats ( Felis catus ) didn't appear in China until the 7th century.

So what was the cat-like creature living alongside Chinese farmers for some 4,000 years before that? The team found that the older specimens belonged to the leopard cat (

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