Cave wolf

Cave wolf
Temporal range: Middle Pleistocene - Late Pleistocene
320,000—12,000 years ago
The Goldfuss holotype,[1] Berlin's Natural History Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species:
C. lupus
Subspecies:
†C. l. spelaeus
Trinomial name
†Canis lupus spelaeus
Goldfuss, 1823[2]
Synonyms[5]

C. l. brevis Kuzmina and Sablin, 1994[3]
C. l. maximus Boudadi-Maligne, 2012[4]

The cave wolf (Canis lupus spelaeus) is an extinct glacial mammoth steppe-adapted white wolf that lived during the Middle Pleistocene to the Late Pleistocene. It inhabited Europe, where its remains have been found in many caves. Its habitat included the mammoth steppe grasslands and boreal needle forests.[6] This large wolf was short-legged compared to its body size,[3] yet its leg size is comparable with that of the Arctic wolf C. l. arctos.[6] Genetic evidence suggests that Late Pleistocene European wolves shared high genetic connectivity with contemporary wolves from Siberia, with continual gene flow from Siberian wolves into European wolves over the course of the Late Pleistocene. Modern European wolves derive most of their ancestry from Siberian wolf populations that expanded into Europe during and after the Last Glacial Maximum, but retain a minor fraction of their ancestry from earlier Late Pleistocene European wolves.[7]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference kempe2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference goldfuss1823 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference kuzmina1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Boudadi2012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference baryshnikov2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference diedrich2022 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Bergström, Anders; Stanton, David W. G.; Taron, Ulrike H.; Frantz, Laurent; Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S.; Ersmark, Erik; Pfrengle, Saskia; Cassatt-Johnstone, Molly; Lebrasseur, Ophélie; Girdland-Flink, Linus; Fernandes, Daniel M.; Ollivier, Morgane; Speidel, Leo; Gopalakrishnan, Shyam; Westbury, Michael V. (2022-07-14). "Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs". Nature. 607 (7918): 313–320. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 9279150. PMID 35768506.