Shift in diet allowed gray wolves to survive ice-age extinction
IMAGE: Gray wolves take down a horse on the mammoth-steppe habitat of Beringia during the late Pleistocene (around 25,000 years ago).
Image:
Julius Csotonyi
April12, 2021 - Gray wolves are among the largest predators to have survived the extinction at the end of the last ice age around11,700 years ago. Today, they can be found roaming Yukon s boreal forest and tundra, with caribou and moose as their main sources of food.
A new study led by the Canadian Museum of Nature shows that wolves may have survived by adapting their diet over thousands of years -from a primary reliance on horses during the Pleistocene, to caribou and moose today. The results are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
Posted: Apr 12, 2021 7:00 AM CT | Last Updated: April 12
This painting shows grey wolves attacking an ancestor of a horse as would have happened in Beringia thousands of years ago. The horses were a wolf s main source of food, but new research says when the horses vanished, they were able to adapt by finding new prey.(Julius Csoto/Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre)
Shift in diet allowed gray wolves to survive ice-age extinction eurekalert.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eurekalert.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
How grey wolves survived ice-age extinction prokerala.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from prokerala.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.