GBIF news release here; paper here
If you see a place where a taxon is highly visible, for example, cheetahs in Africa, horses in Central Asia, and hotspots of orchid diversity in the tropics, then it’s natural to think that this must be where they evolved. But it’s not always true!
All three taxa mentioned above appear to have first evolved in North America. For orchids, this was determined by comparing genetics across many species (orchids have almost 30,000 species, with their highest diversity in the tropics).
The paper does NOT mention iNaturalist, although ¿they do give iNaturalist credit? in a roundabout way, by mentioning GBIF a bunch of times.
The paper that proposes that orchids originated in Australia can be found at https://givnishlab.botany.wisc.edu/Welcome_files/Givnish%20et%20al.%202016%20orchid%20biogeography.pdf
Looking at that one my interpretation of the cladogram and biogeography would be perhaps stem orchids originated in Australia, but crown orchids look as if they have a Neotropical origin.
Cheetahs did not evolve in North America. You may be thinking Miracinonyx, the “American cheetah”, which merely resembled a cheetah.
No, they’re correct. Cheetahs did indeed evolve in North America, it’s not confusion with Miracinonyx.
Cheetahs are thought to have diverged from the ancestral Puma lineage around 6-8 million years ago.
Miracinonyx also evolved in North America, in a case of convergent evolution, but never migrated out of the Americas and eventually went extinct.