Wolf Tales: The Evolutionary History of Wolves

The animal that most canids are
descended from is the tomarctus.

Kingdom - Animalia  

Phylum - Chordata (animals with notochords) 

Subphylum - Vertebrata (animals with a skeleton of bone or cartilage) 

Class - Mammalia 

Subclass - Eutheria (placental mammals) 

Order - Carnivora 

Family - Canidae 

Genus - Canis 

Grey Wolf - Canis Lupis  

Red Wolf - Canis Rufus  

Domestic Dog - Canis Familiaris

Dingo - Canis Familiaris Dingo  

Coyote - Canis Latrans

The canidae family evolutionary lineage
is represented by the color blue.

The wolf is a product of 63 million years of carnivore evolution, and is well adapted to its environment. Nearly all canids are descended from is the tomarctus, which is an animal that lived somewhere between 16-20 million years ago. The canis edwardii, which evolved in the early Pleistocene period about 1.5 million years ago, is the first canid clearly identifiable as a wolf. Some of the most recent evolutionary ancestors are the Dire Wolf (canis dirus) and a large wolf that lived throughout North America (canis ambrusteri). Some of the closest relatives of the wolf are domestic dogs, coyotes, and foxes. In the mid Pleistocene period (around eight hundred thousand years ago) the Dire wolf came about.

Within the canis genus, unfortunately the dire wolf did not survive the mass extinctions of the most recent ice age (nearly 10,000 years ago), which the gray wolf and coyote did survive. Each of these three lineages, although very close, comes from a very different evolutionary background. None of the three is the direct ancestor of the others, although they all come from the same area. The grey wolf was well was established in North America by the time the first Native American and Inuit Peoples came across the Beringia, about eighteen thousand years ago. There is some genetic evidence that the domestic dog is a descendant of the wolf, although the issue is much debated. It has even been recommended that the domestic dog be reclassified as a new subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus familiars.

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