Canis mosbachensis

Canis mosbachensis, sometimes known as the Mosbach wolf, is an extinct small wolf that once inhabited Eurasia from the Middle Pleistocene era to the Late Pleistocene. It is widely accepted as the ancestor of Canis lupus, the grey wolf. The holotype of the Mosbach wolf Canis mosbachensis Soergel, 1925 was found in Jockgrim, Germany. In 2010, a study found that the diversity of the Canis group decreased by the end of the Early Pleistocene to Middle Pleistocene and was limited in Eurasia to two types of wolves. These were the small wolves of the C. mosbachensis–C. variabilis group that were a comparable size to the extant Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), and the large hypercarnivorous Canis (Xenocyon) lycaonoides that was comparable in size to extant northern grey wolves. The Mosbach wolf occurred in time between C. etruscus in the Early Pleistocene and the modern C. lupus. The Mosbach wolf was smaller than most North American wolf populations and smaller than C. rufus, and has been described by Kurten as being similar in size to Canis papilles, the Indian wolf. As wolves continue to evolve they become bigger. Nowak proposed that C. mosbachensis was the ancestor of Eurasian and North American wolves, and that one population of C. mosbachensis invaded North America where it became isolated by the later glaciation and there gave rise to C. rufus. Another population of C. mosbachensis remained in Eurasia and evolved into C. lupus, from where it invaded North America. The true grey wolves made their appearance at the end of the Middle Pleistocene at about 0.5–0.3 million years before present (YBP). The phylogenetic descent of the extant wolf C. lupus from C. etruscus through C. mosbachensis is widely accepted. Thenius, Lumley, and Argant each consider C. mosbachensis to be a subspecies of the grey wolf and propose the designation C. lupus mosbachensis. However, other researchers cannot see a clear anatomical relationship between C. mosbachensis and C. etruscus, that C. mosbachensis is more similar to C.