Beringian wolf

The Beringian wolf was a hypercarnivorous ecomorph of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) that once inhabited eastern Beringia (modern day Alaska and the Yukon) and northern Wyoming during the Late Pleistocene era and the early Holocene era. The Beringian wolf is notable because it was the first gray wolf ecomorph to be identified and comprehensively studied using a range of scientific techniques, which revealed for the first time the feeding behavior of prehistoric wolves. It was similar in size to the modern Alaskan wolf and other Late Pleistocene wolves but was more robust with a shorter, broader palate and large carnassial teeth relative to its skull size. This adaptation allowed it to produce relatively large bite forces, grapple with large struggling prey, and therefore to predate and scavenge on megafauna. With the close of the Late Pleistocene and the extinction of its prey, the Beringian wolf went extinct in North America. However, recent DNA analysis has identified genetically identical wolves living today in remote China and Mongolia.

In 1975, a study was undertaken of canid remains dated to the era (126,000-11,700 years ago) and early Holocene era (11,700 years ago until today) that had been uncovered decades earlier by miners around Fairbanks, Alaska and described as "short-faced wolves". Based on their morphology, these were classified as Canis lupus (Gray wolf). Later genetic analyses supported this classification. The specimens were not assigned a sub-species name but the name eastern "Beringian wolf" was used to describe them.Beringia was an area of land that once spanned the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea from Eurasia to North America, when eastern Beringia included what is now Alaska and the Yukon. Ancient specimens of wolves with similar skull and dentition have been found in western Beringia (northeast Siberia), the Taimyr Peninsula, the Ukraine, and in Germany where the European specimens are classified as Canis lupus spelaeus—the cave wolf.

DNA sequences can be mapped to reveal a phylogenetic tree that represents evolutionary relationships, with each branch point representing the proposed divergence of two lineages from a common ancestor. Studies have found the Beringian wolf to be basal to all other gray wolves except for the extant Indian gray wolf, the extant Himalayan wolf, and the extinct Belgian clade. "The term basal taxon refers to a lineage that diverges early in the history of the group and lies on a branch that originates near the common ancestor of the group."

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