The Beringian wolf is an extinct kind of wolf that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern Wyoming. The extinction of its prey has been attributed to the impact of climate change, competition with other species, including humans.
About Beringian wolf in brief
The Beringian wolf is an extinct kind of wolf that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern Wyoming. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. It has been determined that these wolves are morphologically distinct from modern North American wolves and genetically basal to most modern and extinct wolves. The extinction of its prey has been attributed to the impact of climate change, competition with other species, including humans, or a combination of both factors. Local genetic populations were replaced by others from within the same species or of the same genus. In 2016 a study showed that some of the wolves now living in remote corners of China and Mongolia share a common maternal ancestor with one 28,000-year-old eastern Beredian wolf specimen. The Beringia was once an area of land that spanned the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Sea. A phylogenetic tree of DNA sequences can be mapped to reveal a phylogenetic relationship between Beringians and modern wolves. A subspecies was possibly not assigned because the relationship between the Berserian wolf and the extinct European cave wolf is not clear. In 2007 Jennifer Leonard undertook a study based on the genetic, feeding, and prey species, and behavior of prehistoric wolves, and supported the classification of this wolf as C. lupusus uplupus. The study revealed the genetic relationships, feeding habits, and species of prey species of the Yukon and the Alaska and the C.lupupus specimens were not related to each other.
In 1985, based on their morphology, the paleontologist Stanley John Olsen classified them as Canis lupuus. In 2007, Jennifer Leonard conducted a stable isotope analyses of seventy-four Beringan wolf specimens from Alaska and Yukon that revealed the genetics and feeding behavior of the prehistoric wolves as C lupa uplupi. In the 1930s representatives of the American Museum of Natural History worked with the Alaska College and the Fairbanks Exploration Company to collect specimens uncovered by hydraulic gold dredging near Fairbanks, Alaska. Between 1932 and 1953 twenty-eight wolf skulls were recovered from the Ester, Cripple, Engineer, and Little Eldorado creeks located north and west of Fairbanks. The skulls were thought to be 10,000 years old. The American museum referred to these as a typical Pleistocene species in Fairbanks and referred to them as Aenocyon dirus alaskensis – the Alaskan dire wolf. However, no type specimen, description nor exact location was provided, and because dire wolves had not been found this far north this name was later proposed as nomen nudum. In comparison with the more southerly occurring dire wolf was the same size but heavier and with a more robust skull and dentition. The unique adaptation of the skull allowed it to produce relatively large bite forces, grapple with large struggling prey, and therefore made predation and scavenging on Pleistsocene megafauna possible.
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This page is based on the article Beringian wolf published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
