Pleistocene wolf

This article is about the extinct Late Pleistocene wolf. For the extinct Pleistocene wolf that once existed south of the Wisconsin glaciation, see Dire wolf. For the extant wolf, see Wolf.
Lithograph of Pleistocene wolf remains from Britain

During the Pleistocene, wolves were widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere.[1] Some Pleistocene wolves, such as Beringian wolves and those from Japan, exhibited large body size in comparison to modern gray wolf populations.[2][3] Genetic analysis of the remains of Late Pleistocene wolves suggest that across their range populations of wolves maintained considerable gene flow between each other and thus there was limited genetic divergence between them. Modern wolves mostly draw their ancestry from some Siberian populations of Late Pleistocene gray wolves, which largely replaced other gray wolf populations after the Last Glacial Maximum.[4]

  1. ^ Ramos-Madrigal, Jazmín; Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S.; Carøe, Christian; Mak, Sarah S.T.; Niemann, Jonas; Samaniego Castruita, José A.; Fedorov, Sergey; Kandyba, Alexander; Germonpré, Mietje; Bocherens, Hervé; Feuerborn, Tatiana R.; Pitulko, Vladimir V.; Pavlova, Elena Y.; Nikolskiy, Pavel A.; Kasparov, Aleksei K. (January 2021). "Genomes of Pleistocene Siberian Wolves Uncover Multiple Extinct Wolf Lineages". Current Biology. 31 (1): 198–206.e8. Bibcode:2021CBio...31E.198R. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.10.002. PMC 7809626. PMID 33125870.
  2. ^ Niemann et al. 2021.
  3. ^ Segawa, Takahiro; Yonezawa, Takahiro; Mori, Hiroshi; Kohno, Ayako; Kudo, Yuichiro; Akiyoshi, Ayumi; Wu, Jiaqi; Tokanai, Fuyuki; Sakamoto, Minoru; Kohno, Naoki; Nishihara, Hidenori (June 2022). "Paleogenomics reveals independent and hybrid origins of two morphologically distinct wolf lineages endemic to Japan". Current Biology. 32 (11): 2494–2504.e5. Bibcode:2022CBio...32E2494S. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.034. PMID 35537455.
  4. ^ 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. Bibcode:2022Natur.607..313B. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 9279150. PMID 35768506.