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Concept
Pleistocene wolf
Summary
The Pleistocene wolf, also referred to as the Late Pleistocene wolf, is an extinct lineage or ecomorph of the grey wolf (Canis lupus). It was a Late Pleistocene 129 Ka – early Holocene 11 Ka hypercarnivore. While comparable in size to a big modern grey wolf, it possessed a shorter, broader palate with large carnassial teeth relative to its overall skull size, allowing it to prey and scavenge on Pleistocene megafauna. Such an adaptation is an example of phenotypic plasticity. It was once distributed across the northern Holarctic. Phylogenetic evidence indicates that despite being much smaller than the prehistoric wolf, the Japanese wolf (C. l. hodophilax), which went extinct in the early 20th century, was of a Pleistocene wolf lineage, thus extending its survival to several millennia after its previous estimated extinction around 7,500 years ago.
The Pleistocene wolf (Canis cf. lupus, where cf. in Latin means confer, uncertain) has not yet been taxonomically classified but based on genetic analysis is believed to be an ecomorph of Canis lupus. The ancient wolf specimens from Europe have been classified as Canis lupus spelaeus Goldfuß, 1823 - the cave wolf. Its other described member, the Japanese wolf, which was not known to be a member of the lineage until 2021, is classified as Canis lupus hodophilax.
The Late Pleistocene era was a time of glaciation, climate change, and the advance of humans into isolated areas. During the Late Pleistocene glaciation, a vast mammoth steppe stretched from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over Beringia into Alaska and the Yukon. The close of this era was characterized by a series of severe and rapid climate oscillations with regional temperature changes of up to , which has been correlated with megafaunal extinctions. There is no evidence of megafaunal extinctions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500 YBP), indicating that increasing cold and glaciation were not factors. Multiple events appear to have caused the rapid replacement of one species by another one within the same genus, or one population by another within the same species, across a broad area.
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