Falklands Wolf Mystery Solved At Last

Galvasean

First described by Charles Darwin in 1838 the Falklands Wolf (Dusicyon australis, formerly Canis antarcticus) has always been something of a mystery. How did it get to the Falkland Islands? Where did it come from? Who were it's ancestors? Biologists have been perplexed for over a century. Finally, we have a good idea to answer all of these questions.

the Falklands wolf's closest living relative is actually the maned wolf -- an unusually long-legged, fox-like South American canid. The researchers also found that the four Falklands wolf samples that they examined shared a common ancestor at least 70,000 years ago, which suggests that they arrived on the islands before the end of the last ice age and before humans ever made it into the New World. That rules out the prevailing theory that Native Americans had anything to do with their presence on the islands.

"The biggest surprise was that the divergence of the Falklands wolf from its closest living relative, the maned wolf, occurred over 6 million years ago," Slater said. "Canids don't show up in the South American fossil record until 2.5 million years ago, which means these lineages must have evolved in North America. The problem is that there are no good fossils that can be assigned to the Falklands wolf lineage in North America."

Full article here.

Weidii

Slightly unrelated, but I remember the first time I saw/heard of a maned wold (embarassingly recently) it blew my mind!