Supplementary material from "Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves"

• Main Authors: Tomiya, Susumu, Meachen, Julie A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Figshare 2017
• Subjects: Evolutionary Biology; FOS Biological sciences; Ecology; 40308 Palaeontology incl. Palynology; FOS Earth and related environmental sciences; Canis lupus; gray wolf
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3950767; https://figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Postcranial_diversity_and_recent_ecomorphic_impoverishment_of_North_American_gray_wolves_/3950767

Recent advances in genomics and palaeontology have begun to unravel the complex evolutionary history of the gray wolf, Canis lupus . Still, much of their phenotypic variation across time and space remains to be documented. We examined the limb morphology of the fossil and modern North American gray wolves from the late Quaternary (Canis lupus nubilus) and Mexican wolves ( C. l. baileyi ) from much of the USA is an unprecedented loss of postcranial diversity through removal of short-legged forms. Conservation of these wolves is thus critical to restoration of the ecophenotypic diversity and evolutionary potential of gray wolves in North America.