Canidae is a biological family of dog-like carnivorans, colloquially referred to as dogs, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a canid. The family includes three subfamilies: the Caninae, the extinct Borophaginae and Hesperocyoninae. The Caninae are known as canines, and include domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals and other species.
There are 38 subspecies of Canis lupus listed in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World. These subspecies were named over the past 250 years, and since their naming, a number of them have gone extinct. The nominate subspecies is the Eurasian wolf.
The red wolf is a canine native to the southeastern United States. Its size is intermediate between the coyote and gray wolf.
The dire wolf is an extinct canine. The dire wolf lived in the Americas during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene epochs. The species was named in 1858, four years after the first specimen had been found. Two subspecies are recognized: Aenocyon dirus guildayi and Aenocyon dirus dirus. The largest collection of its fossils has been obtained from the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
Canis is a genus of the Caninae which includes multiple extant species, such as wolves, dogs, coyotes, and golden jackals. Species of this genus are distinguished by their moderate to large size, their massive, well-developed skulls and dentition, long legs, and comparatively short ears and tails.
The Great Plains wolf, also known as the buffalo wolf or loafer, is a subspecies of gray wolf that once extended throughout the Great Plains, from southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada southward to northern Texas in the United States. The subspecies was thought to be extinct in 1926, until studies declared that its descendants were found in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. They were described as a large, light-colored wolf but with black and white varying between individual wolves, with some all white or all black. The Native Americans of North Dakota told of how only three Great Plains wolves could bring down any sized bison.
Xenocyon is an extinct group of canids, either considered a distinct genus or a subgenus of Canis. The group includes Canis (Xenocyon) africanus, Canis (Xenocyon) antonii and Canis (Xenocyon) falconeri that gave rise to Canis (Xenocyon) lycanoides. The hypercarnivorous Xenocyon is thought to be closely related and possibly ancestral to modern dhole and the African wild dog, as well as the insular Sardinian dhole.
Canis edwardii, also known as Edward's wolf, is an extinct species of wolf in the genus Canis which was endemic to North America three million years ago from the Late Blancan stage of the Pliocene epoch and was extinct by the end of the Irvingtonian stage of the Pleistocene epoch.
Canis lepophagus is an extinct species of canid which was endemic to much of North America during the Early Pliocene. It is notable because its lineage is proposed to have led to both wolves and coyotes.
Canis nehringi is an extinct species of canid. Canis gezi, a poorly known small wolf from the Ensenadan of South America, appears to have given rise to Canis nehringi, a Lujanian species from Argentina. The species was first described by Florentino Ameghino in 1902.
The Haile Quarry or Haile sites are an Early Miocene and Pleistocene assemblage of vertebrate fossils located in the Haile quarries, Alachua County, northern Florida. The assemblage was discovered during phosphate mining, which began in the late 1940s. Haile sites are found in the Alachua Formation. Two sites within the Ocala Limestone yielded Upper Eocene Valvatida and mollusks.
The Greenland wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf that is native to Greenland. Historically, it was heavily persecuted, but today it is fully protected and about 90% of the wolf's range falls within the boundaries of the Northeast Greenland National Park.
The Beringian wolf is an extinct population of wolf that lived during the Ice Age. It inhabited what is now modern-day Alaska, Yukon, and northern British Columbia. Some of these wolves survived well into the Holocene. The Beringian wolf is an ecomorph of the gray wolf and has been comprehensively studied using a range of scientific techniques, yielding new information on their prey species and feeding behaviors. It has been determined that these wolves are morphologically distinct from modern North American wolves and genetically basal to most modern and extinct wolves. The Beringian wolf has not been assigned a subspecies classification and its relationship with the extinct European cave wolf is not clear.
The Pleistocene coyote, also known as the Ice Age coyote, is an extinct subspecies of coyote that lived in western North America during the Late Pleistocene era. Most remains of the subspecies were found in southern California, though at least one was discovered in Idaho. It was part of a North American carnivore guild that included other canids like foxes, gray wolves, and dire wolves. Some studies suggest that the Pleistocene "coyote" was not in fact a coyote, but rather an extinct western population of the red wolf.
The Pleistocene wolf, also referred to as the Late Pleistocene wolf, is an extinct lineage or ecomorph of the grey wolf. It was a Late Pleistocene 129 Ka – early Holocene 11 Ka hypercarnivore. While comparable in size to a large modern grey wolf, it possessed a shorter, broader palate with large carnassial teeth relative to its overall skull size, allowing it to prey and scavenge on Pleistocene megafauna. Such an adaptation is an example of phenotypic plasticity. It was once distributed across the northern Holarctic. Phylogenetic evidence indicates that despite being much smaller than this prehistoric wolf, the Japanese wolf, which went extinct in the early 20th century, was of a Pleistocene wolf lineage, thus extending its survival to several millennia after its previous estimated extinction around 7,500 years ago.
The evolution of the wolf occurred over a geologic time scale of at least 300 thousand years. The grey wolf Canis lupus is a highly adaptable species that is able to exist in a range of environments and which possesses a wide distribution across the Holarctic. Studies of modern grey wolves have identified distinct sub-populations that live in close proximity to each other. This variation in sub-populations is closely linked to differences in habitat – precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and prey specialization – which affect cranio-dental plasticity.
Canis arnensis, the Arno River dog, is an extinct species of canine that was endemic to Mediterranean Europe during the Early Pleistocene. The Arno River dog has been described as a small jackal-like dog. Its anatomy and morphology relate it more to the modern golden jackal than to the larger Etruscan wolf of that time. It is probably the ancestor of modern jackals.
Canis etruscus, the Etruscan wolf, is an extinct species of canine that was endemic to Mediterranean Europe during the Early Pleistocene. The Etruscan wolf is described as a small wolf-like dog.
Canis mosbachensis is an extinct wolf that once inhabited Europe 600,000—420,000 years ago. The Mosbach wolf was a short-legged carcass feeder adapted for scavenging megafauna on the mammoth steppe. The Mosbach wolf is proposed as the ancestor of the grey wolf Canis lupus but some mammalogists have assigned it as the subspecies Canis lupus mosbachensis.
Cerdocyonina is an extant subtribe of the canines and is exclusively endemic to the Americas. Often described to be "fox-like" in appearance and behavior, they are more closely related to the wolf-like canids such as Canis than they are to the fox genus Vulpes. Its members are colloquially known as the South American canids and there are 10 extant species. They are sometimes referred to as South American foxes in the older literature, but the term zorro has been recommended by mammalogists to avoid confusion with the true foxes of the tribe Vulpini, which includes the genus Vulpes.
