The Mystery of the Falklands Wolf

When is the only mammal on an island group a large canid, with no mice, rats, or bats to accompany it? There's only one case, that of the now-extinct Falklands wolf. These red-furred, coyote-size animals have always been a puzzle. Now scientists using DNA from preserved specimens have confirmed it was neither a true wolf nor a domestic dog nor a coyote: it was s a relative of the long-legged maned wolf, a unique canid of South America. How did it get to the Falklands, 480km from the mainland, thousands of years before humans made it to the New World? We still don't know.



THANKS to Dale Drinnon for passing on this linke