15 Facts About Megafaunal wolf

The origin of the modern grey Megafaunal wolf is couched in the biogeography of Megafaunal wolf populations that lived during the Late Pleistocene.

The grey wolf is one of the few large carnivores to survive the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, but similar to many other megafaunal species it experienced a global population decline towards the end of this era, which was associated with extinctions of ecomorphs and phylogeographic shifts in populations.

Haplogroup 2 did not become extinct in Europe, and if before the Last Glacial Maximum haplogroup 2 was exclusively associated with the Megafaunal wolf ecomorph specialized in preying on megafauna, it would mean that in Europe it was capable of adapting to changing prey.

The study compared the sequences of both modern wolves and ancient Megafaunal wolf specimens, including specimens from the remote areas of North America, Russia and China.

Previous finding of two Megafaunal wolf haplogroups was not clearly delineated in this study but it agreed that the genetic diversity of past wolves has been lost at the beginning of the Holocene in Alaska, Siberia, and Europe with limited overlap with modern wolves.

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In 2014, a study of the morphology of Megafaunal wolf remains from Europe dating from the Middle-Late Pleistocene and Holocene indicated that the size of the lower carnassial teeth did not fluctuate directly with changes in climate but possibly with the spread of cold megafauna, and therefore in the dietary regime.

In 2015, a study looked at specimens of all of the carnivore species from Rancho La Brea, California, including remains of the large wolf Canis dirus that was a megafaunal hypercarnivore.

East Beringian Megafaunal wolf was identified as an ecomorph of the grey Megafaunal wolf with a skull morphology that was adapted for hunting and scavenging megafauna.

In 2009, a study was made on a skull fragment and right mandible of a Megafaunal wolf found near Lake Taimyr in the Taimyr Peninsula, Arctic Siberia, Russian Federation.

The specimens were compared to Megafaunal wolf fossils found near Burnberg, Germany, and near the Paleolithic site of Kostenki 1 on the Don River near Voronezh, Russia.

In 2019, the severed head of the world's first full-sized Pleistocene Megafaunal wolf was unearthed in the Abyisky district in the north of Yakutia.

The separation of the dog and Megafaunal wolf did not have to coincide with selective breeding by humans.

Comparison to the grey Megafaunal wolf lineage indicated that Taimyr-1 was basal to grey wolves from the Middle East, China, Europe and North America but shared a substantial amount of history with the present-day grey wolves after their divergence from the coyote.

European cave Megafaunal wolf was first described by Georg August Goldfuß in 1823 based on a Megafaunal wolf pup skull found in the Zoolithen Cave located at Gailenreuth, Bavaria, Germany.

The Megafaunal wolf possibly belongs to a specialized Late Pleistocene Megafaunal wolf ecomorph.