Honshū Wolf
Japanese islands
1,700,000 - 1905
The Honshū (hon-shoe) Wolf was a very old subspecies to evolve in Japan. The predecessor (the gray wolf) might have migrated to Japan and evolved into the Honshū Wolf 1.7million years ago, but no one knows for sure. No one knows how or when the gray wolf got to Japan in the first place.
Honshū Wolf skeleton
Surprisingly the Honshū Wolf did not go extinct because of hunting, it went extinct because of rabies that were introduced by, most likely, the domestic dog.
Epicyon Haydeni
North America
20,600,000 - 5,330,000
North America
20,600,000 - 5,330,000
The Epicyon Haydeni (e-p-E-on hay-den-e) or Giant Hyena roamed North America for about 15.5 million years. Being over 3feet tall the
Giant Hyena was the largest of the canid (dog) family. No one knows why the Giant Hyena went extinct but its estimated that it was because their pray started to decline. In reality the Giant Hyena is not a hyena, its a giant dog, though it had cone like teeth like a hyena does, giving it its nickname.
Giant Hyena was the largest of the canid (dog) family. No one knows why the Giant Hyena went extinct but its estimated that it was because their pray started to decline. In reality the Giant Hyena is not a hyena, its a giant dog, though it had cone like teeth like a hyena does, giving it its nickname.
Like the gray wolf the Epicyon Haydeni most likely hunted in packs allowing them to take down their pray (in this case a synthetoceras (sin-thee-tow-sir-us)) faster and more effectively. If this dog were alive today it would pray on not only horses and sheep but us too. The Epicyon Haydeni was the last of the bone crushing linage of the dog family.
The Epicyon extinction event is a mystery indeed. Running in packs like wolves for more of a chance of acquiring its prey to feed upon, and adapting to a more arid and partial open grassland environment developing in the time period when it existed are better advantages for perpetuating its species survival. Like the dire wolf having a large body size and also existing in packs but also eventually going extinct shows a pattern of leaving an ecological niche open for more meduim to smaller sized canids to exists. That being said, do we concentrate our scientific study efforts towards looking at its size and environment changes as being the causes of its extinction? Is there other factors that are the unknown cause or combination of causes of its extinction?
ReplyDeleteDaniel Hutchinson
I think eventually were going to find out we have been humans for millions of years and we killed them off just like everythingelse that was big or great while we were up and comming in the food chain
DeleteWell I really can't describe what I have a picture of. It looks like a dog, it looks like a deer and it looks like a cat, & or a wolf,coyote, and especially a Hyena. combination of this is really bizarre. Oh and a long skeleton tale. It still had piece of hairs between its eye balls. And a bit of old dried out fur all over its body. Insides where totally out it. Ate by carnivars, I quess. Not sure what is going on around here. could tell more but....
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