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New clues to the Falklands wolf mystery
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Public release date: 2-Nov-2009
Contact: Cathleen Genova
617-397-2802
New clues to the Falklands wolf mystery
Ever since the Falklands wolf was described by Darwin himself, the origin of this now-extinct canid found only on the Falkland Islands far off the east coast of Argentina has remained a mystery. Now, researchers reporting in the November 3rd issue of Current Biology who have compared DNA from four of the world's dozen or so known Falklands wolf museum specimens to that of living canids offer new insight into the evolutionary ancestry of these enigmatic carnivores.
"One of the big draws for an evolutionary biologist is that this species had a big influence on Darwin's ideas about how species evolve," said Graham Slater of the University of California, Los Angeles, noting that Darwin recognized differences between the East Falkland and West Falkland wolves as evidence that species are not fixed entities. But the wolves' circumstances were also just downright puzzling.
"It's really strange that the only native mammal on an island would be a large canid," Slater explained. "There are no other native terrestrial mammals—not even a mouse. It's even stranger when you consider that the Falklands are some ...
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