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Post by another specialist on May 1, 2006 21:25:04 GMT
 another from my computer |
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Post by Melanie on Aug 30, 2007 20:46:00 GMT
CANIS ANTARCTICUS.
Canis antarcticus, Shaw, Gen. Zoology, vol. i. p. 331 (1800) ; Desmarest,
Maramalogie, p. 199 (1820) ; Waterhouse, Zool. of H.M.S.
'Beagle/ Mammalia, p. 7, plate 4 (1839) ; J. A. Wagner,
Supplement to Schreber's Saugth., Abth. ii. p. 402 ; Burmeister,
Republique Argentine, vol. iii. p. 142.
Dasicyon antarcticus, Hamilton Smith, Naturalist's Library, vol. ix.
p. 252, pi. 23 (1839).
Pseudalopex antarcticus, Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p, 531 ; id. Catalogue
of Carnivorous Mammalia, p. 200.
Antarctic Dog, Pennant, Quadrupeds, 1st edition, p. 240 (1781), 3rd
edition, p. 257 (1793).
Loup-renard, Bougainville, Voyage autour du Monde, p. 65 (1771).
THIS small species of Wolf, only found in the Falkland Islands, where
its numbers are rapidly diminishing, appears to have been first described
by Dom. Pernetty in his ' Histoire d'un voyage aux isles Maloaines,' in
1763 and 1764*. The explorers of that expedition, seeing that the
animals advanced towards them, were inclined to regard them as
ferocious creatures ; but Pernetty sagaciously observes :
" Peut-etre
cet animal n'est-il pas feroce, et ne venait-il se presenter et s'approcher
de nous, que parce qu'il n'avait jamais vu d'hommes."
The sailors of Commodore Byron's expedition f were similarly
astonished and not a little alarmed. " The master having been sent
one day to sound the coast upon the south shore, reported at his return
that four creatures of great fierceness, resembling wolves, ran up to
their bellies in the water to attack the people in the boat, and that as they happened to have no fire-arms with them, they had immediately
put the boat off in deep water."
In his account of the Voyage of the '
Beagle,'* Mr. Darwin
observes :
" To this day their manners remain the same. They have
been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath
the head of a sleeping seaman. The Gauchos, also, have frequently
killed them in the evening by holding out a piece of meat in one hand,
and in the other a knife ready to stick them."
The species was found in both the East and West Falkland Islands,
but at the time of the visit of the '
Beagle
'
their numbers had already
so decreased that they had altogether disappeared from the neck of land
between San Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound in the Eastern Island.
They largely feed on native geese, which, to escape them, have taken
to build on outlying islets. Mr. Darwin also tells us that they do not
go in packs, and are not nocturnal, though they wander about more in
the evening than in broad day. Except during the breeding-season,
they are generally silent.
They burrow in the ground like a fox, and Byron noticed pieces of
seals they had mangled, and skins of penguins, scattered about the
mouths of their holes.
" To get rid of these creatures," he tells us,
" our people set fire to the grass, so that the country was in a blaze as
far as the eye could reach for several days, and we could see them
running in great numbers to seek other quarters." Our figure,
Plate VIIL, is drawn from a specimen brought from East Falkland
Island by Sir W. Burnet.
The fur of this animal is moderately long, with no very abundant
underfur, which is of a pale brown colour. The hairs are yellow,
commonly black at the apex, annulated with white on the upper parts
of the body ; those of the hinder part of the belly of a nearly uniform
dirty white, and those of the chest yellowish, with black tips and greyish
at the base.
The hairs of the lips, chin, and throat are white, and also the inner
margins of the ears. The insides of the thighs are whitish. The limbs
are fulvous externally, the feet somewhat paler. There may be a blackish tint on the crown of the head ; the muzzle is somewhat lighter
in colour. The tail, which is rather bushy, is coloured like the body
for the proximal two fifths of its length, the next two fifths are black
and its terminal fifth is white.
There are no special markings on the body except a black patch
outside the lower part of the hind leg, just above the heel. There is
also a darkening of the fur at the side of the lower part of the neck, so
as to form an approach to a collar. The individuals inhabiting the
Eastern Island are smaller and redder than those of West Falkland.
The ears are always rather short.
Habitat. The Falkland Islands.
Centimeters.
Length from snout to root of tail 97'0
of tail 28-5
from heel to end of longest digit 18*0
of ear 6'5
Skeletal and Dental Characters.
The sagittal ridge is flattened, and this flattened tract has a lyrate
margin.
The suture between the palatine and maxillary bones does not
advance so far forwards as a line joining the hinder margins of the
inner tubercles of the fourth upper premolar.
In the skull examined the hind part of the third upper premolar is
placed rather within the anterior part of the fourth premolar, but this
may be an individual peculiarity.
Source: Dogs, Jackals, Wolves and Foxes. Monograph of the Canidae. St. George Mivart
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Post by Melanie on Aug 30, 2007 20:48:02 GMT
Family CANIDAE: Wolves, Dogs, Foxes
ANTARCTIC WOLF; FALKLAND Fox
DUSICYON AUSTRALIS (Kerr)
Canis vulpes australis Kerr, Linnaeus's Animal Kingdom, p. 144, 1792 (West Falkland
Island; see Osgood, Journ. Mamm., vol. 1, p. 35, 1919).
SYNONYMS: Canis antarcticus Bechstein, Uebers. Vierfiiss. Thiere Pennant, vol. 1, p.
271, footnote, 1799; Dusicyon antarcticus Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 8,
vol. 13, p. 353, 1914.
FIGS.: Mivart, 1890, pi. 8 (col.); Pocock, 1913, figs. 70B, 71 A, 73, 74B, D (skull and
teeth).
The Falkland Island fox, although often called a wolf, is not
a wolf at all and is not even closely related to the North
American coyotes, as Huxley formerly supposed. Instead it
is a near relative of the group of South American foxes, which
are now regarded as distinguishable under the generic title
Dusicyon. How this animal reached the Falkland Islands
will doubtless ever remain a matter for speculation. Foxlike in appearance, this animal stands 15 inches at the
shoulder. Its coat is thick and soft, lacking coarse long hair
and having a bushy tail. Pocock (1913) describes a specimen
as having the prevailing color of the body brown "relieved by
fine speckling due to the narrow pale band on the individual
hairs." Below, the color is brownish, except that the posterior
part of the belly and upper end of the throat are white, the
chin and lower jaw white with a fuscous tint. There is a
marked fuscous patch above the hock of the hind leg. The tail
on its basal two-fifths is like the back, the middle part black
and the tip white. The ears, according to Pocock, are unusually
small. The skull is characterized among other things by
the lyrate sagittal area and truncated instead of pointed occipital
crest. In these respects it agrees with some other of the
South American "foxes." Mivart (1890) gives the following
measurements : Length of head and body, 970 mm. ; tail, 285 ;
hind foot, 180; ear, 65; skull length, 110. It is said that the
animal formerly occurring on the East Falkland Island was
smaller and redder than the one on West Falkland.
The history of the Falkland fox has been several times written,
most recently by Renshawtl931). He points out that the
animal was first discovered in January, 1690, on South Falkland
by Strong's party, who captured one alive and kept it for
several months on their ship. Unfortunately the vessel
finally had occasion to discharge its guns, which so startled the
fox that it leaped overboard and perished. In his voyage of
1763-64, the French navigator Pernetty again found the
species, and the discovery of it had been credited to him by
writers, until Strong's earlier account was brought to notice.
In 1765 Commodore Byron took possession of the islands for
Great Britain, and his landing party records that several of
these foxes came to meet the men, wading out toward them in
curiosity at the strange apparition. The sailors, however,
believing the "wolves" were actuated by ferocity, at first
retreated, but later found that the animals were quite without
fear. The animals were so numerous that the men set fire to
the long grass and presently saw great numbers of them running
to escape the flames. Byron brought a live one back to
England, and this individual was later described by Pennant
and thus became the basis of Kerr's name.
When Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle stopped at the Falklands in 1833, the animal was still common there, but
its absurdly tame habits, he foresaw, would lead to its early
extermination. Indeed, he mentions that the Gauchos would
capture them by holding out a bit of meat to a fox in one hand
and stab the animal with a knife held in the other, when the fox
came within reach.
Such an abundant and soft-furred animal, thus easily caught,
attracted the notice of John Jacob Astor, then active in the
fur trade, who in 1839 sent men to the Falklands to collect
pelts, and great numbers of them were taken. Hamilton
Smith mentions seeing quantities of them in Astor's warehouse
at New York. Renshaw even says that the extermination of
the species from East Falkland may date from this exploitation;
at all events by 1863 they were already extinct in the
eastern part of East Falkland. When, later, the Scotch settlers
started raising sheep on the Falklands, the foxes seem to
have developed a taste for mutton and would kill sheep by
attacking one or two or three together. As a result a poisoning
campaign was undertaken and many were destroyed. In 1870
Byng wrote to the Zoological Society that they were almost
exterminated, and the last one is said to have been killed in
1876 at Shallow Bay, West Falkland.The Antarctic "wolves" were said to feed on various native
birds, harrying the penguin colonies and driving the upland
geese to nest on small islands off the coasts. Seals were eaten
too. Their extreme tameness may have been a result of long
isolation and lack of contact with man, but their failure to
develop any wholesome fear of him may have been in part a
result of the use of such silent weapons as bolos and knives
and probably traps, rather than firearms.
Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle and Darwin in 1836 brought
back four of these animals, two of which are still preserved as
specimens in the British Museum, which has a skeleton in
addition. The Royal College of Surgeons had two skulls
which may now be in the British Museum, for according to
Pocock (1913) there are five crania in that institution. Pocock
adds that the other known material representing this animal
is in Paris, but he does not tell of what it consists. Renshaw,
however, states that the Leiden Museum has three specimens.
It was first exhibited by the Zoological Society of London in
1845. Twenty years later, in 1868, a pair was again sent to
the Society, but one only survived the journey. Again in
1870, a pair was sent by Byng, of which the male died on the
voyage.
Source: Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere G. M. Allen
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Post by Melanie on Aug 30, 2007 22:03:42 GMT
 Source: Dogs, Jackals, Wolves and Foxes. Monograph of the Canidae. St. George Mivart |
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Post by another specialist on Aug 31, 2007 4:25:24 GMT
reply 19 mentions the above image
Illustration was by John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912)
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Post by another specialist on Sept 8, 2007 20:47:44 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Oct 9, 2008 8:52:59 GMT
Taxonomy [top] Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family ANIMALIA CHORDATA MAMMALIA CARNIVORA CANIDAE Scientific Name: Dusicyon australis Species Authority Infra-specific Authority: (Kerr, 1792) Common Name/s: English – Falkland Island Wolf, Falklands Wolf Assessment Information [top] Red List Category & Criteria: Extinct ver 3.1 Year Assessed: 2008 Assessor/s IUCN SSC Canid Specialist Group Evaluator/s: Sillero-Zubiri, C. & Hoffmann, M. (Canid Red List Authority) Justification: Dusicyon australis was endemic to the Falkland Islands. It was discovered in 1690 and was still common when Charles Darwin visited the Falklands in 1833. Throughout the 1800s, however, the population declined drastically. The last individual is believed to have been killed in 1876. History: 2004 – Extinct (IUCN 2004) 1996 – Extinct (Baillie and Groombridge 1996) 1994 – Extinct (Groombridge 1994) 1990 – Extinct (IUCN 1990) 1988 – Extinct (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1988) 1986 – Extinct (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1986) Geographic Range [top] Range Description: Dusicyon australis was endemic to the Falkland Islands. Countries: Regionally extinct: Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Population [top] Population: It was discovered in 1690 and was still common when Charles Darwin visited the Falklands in 1833. Throughout the 1800s however, the population declined drastically. The last individual is believed to have been killed in 1876. Habitat and Ecology [top] Systems: Terrestrial Threats [top] Major Threat(s): The species was hunted by US fur traders in the 1830s, and when Scottish settlers arrived in the 1860s and began raising sheep on the Island, D. australis was poisoned as a pest species. www.iucnredlist.org/details/6923 |
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Post by another specialist on Nov 20, 2008 12:39:23 GMT
 Conservation Biology in Theory and Practice By Graeme Caughley, Anne Gunn |
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Post by another specialist on Dec 14, 2008 7:11:19 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Dec 14, 2008 7:18:44 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Jun 17, 2009 19:43:58 GMT
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Post by Melanie on Nov 4, 2009 8:53:13 GMT
ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2009) — 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 480 kilometers from the South American mainland. The question is, how did they get there?" Possible explanations for the wolves' presence on the islands, which have never been connected to the South American mainland, range from dispersal by ice or logs to domestication and subsequent transport by Native Americans. Ultimately, the Falklands wolf died out because it was perceived as a threat to settlers and their sheep, although fur traders took out a lot of the population as well. Biologists have also puzzled over the Falklands wolf's ancestry. It had been suggested that they were related to domestic dogs, North American coyotes, or South American foxes. Slater said the wolves were the size of a coyote, but much stockier, with fur the color of a red fox. They had short muzzles, just like gray wolves, and thick, wooly fur. Slater's team now reports that the Falklands wolf's closest living relative is actually the maned wolf -- an unusually long-legged, fox-like South American canid. The researchers also found that the four Falklands wolf samples that they examined shared a common ancestor at least 70,000 years ago, which suggests that they arrived on the islands before the end of the last ice age and before humans ever made it into the New World. That rules out the prevailing theory that Native Americans had anything to do with their presence on the islands. "The biggest surprise was that the divergence of the Falklands wolf from its closest living relative, the maned wolf, occurred over 6 million years ago," Slater said. "Canids don't show up in the South American fossil record until 2.5 million years ago, which means these lineages must have evolved in North America. The problem is that there are no good fossils that can be assigned to the Falklands wolf lineage in North America." Given that maned and Falklands wolves split so long ago, there should be fossils of their close relatives in South America, Slater said. And in fact, the researchers may have a candidate: a species from Patagonia called Dusicyon avus, which went extinct 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Slater says that's a possibility that study coauthor Alan Cooper at the University of Adelaide in Australia is further investigating now. The researchers include Graham J. Slater, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Olaf Thalmann, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Jennifer A. Leonard, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, Rena M. Schweizer, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Klaus-Peter Koepfli, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, John P. Pollinger, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, Nicolas J. Rawlence, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Jeremy J. Austin, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Alan Cooper, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; and Robert K. Wayne, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091102121449.htm |
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Post by Melanie on Jan 20, 2013 3:28:39 GMT
A new article about the Falkland Islands Wolf Abstract The origin of the extinct Falkland Island wolf (FIW), Dusicyon australis, has remained a mystery since it was first recorded by Europeans in the 17th Century. It is the only terrestrial mammal on the Falkland Islands (also known as the Malvinas Islands) which lie ~460km from Argentina, leading to suggestions of either human-mediated transport or over-water dispersal. Previous studies used ancient DNA from museum specimens to suggest that the FIW diverged from its closest living relative, the South American maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) around 7 Ma, and colonized the islands ~330 ka by unknown means. In contrast, we retrieve ancient DNA from subfossils of an extinct mainland relative, Dusicyon avus, and reveal the FIW lineage became isolated only 16 ka (8-31 ka), during the last glacial phase. Submarine terraces, formed on the Argentine coastal shelf by low sea-stands during this period, suggest that the FIW colonized via a narrow, shallow marine strait, potentially while it was frozen over. ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/74885 |
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Post by Melanie on Mar 8, 2013 13:36:41 GMT
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Post by Melanie on May 1, 2014 19:10:50 GMT
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Post by surroundx on Apr 7, 2015 14:08:26 GMT
Review of the mounted skins and skulls of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, held in museum collectionsAbstract Only nine skins of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, are currently known in museum collections. In this article we present the results of locating these specimens with a special focus on the origins of two mounted skins in Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden and in the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden. Although only a few specimens were collected, their history is far more complicated than initially thought, and most of their documentary records are fragmented or lost. Source: Jansen, J. J. F. J. and van der Mije, S. D. (2015). Review of the mounted skins and skulls of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, held in museum collections. Archives of natural history 42(1): 91-100. [ Abstract]
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Post by surroundx on Oct 7, 2015 13:01:50 GMT
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Post by koeiyabe on Nov 28, 2015 18:42:23 GMT
 "Living Things Vanished from the Earth (in Japanese)" by Toshio Inomata (1993) with Colias ponteni (imperialis) |
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Post by koeiyabe on Dec 12, 2015 18:33:39 GMT
"The Earth Extinct Fauna (in Japanese)" by Tadaaki Imaizumi (1986)  |
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Post by surroundx on Jan 10, 2017 9:27:46 GMT
Hamley, Catherine "Kit" M. (2016). Humans and the Falkland Islands Warrah: Investigating the origins of an extinct endemic canid. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2538. [ Abstract] |
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