Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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New fossil skeleton of extinct wolf recently mounted in the American Museum. More than a thousand complete skulls and a proportionate number of skeleton bones have been disinterred in the asphalt beds at Rancho La Brea the largest known recent wolves. Other individuals are considerably smaller than some of the large northern wolves of the present day. The skull is especially large, and the head seems to have been relatively large compared with the limbs. The teeth are very massive, but those regions of the cheek-tooth dentition con- structed especially for crushing are rela- tively small. The comparatively light limbs and very massive head show that the animal was not as well developed for running as are the timber wolves and coy- otes. The massiveness of the dentition, without corresponding development of the crushing surface, indicates use of the teeth in smashing large bones. The form of the skull indicates that the head was normally held low and was often used in hard pulling and hauling of heavy bodies. The great number of individuals of Canis dims found at Rancho La Brea, suggests that the wolves of this species sometimes associ- ated themselves in packs and that groups of considerable size may have assembled to kill isolated ungulates and edentates. Particularly the young of the large ani- mals, the aged and injured, when they could be separated from their associates, would be the natural prey of the great wolf, but adults in normal strength may also have succumbed to the combined attack of several of these powerful animals." Dr. Merriam gives the length of one of the largest skulls as 282 milli- metres (lljg inches). The skeleton shown in the photograph is that of an unusually large animal, and was presented in exchange by the University of California. It has been mounted by Mr. Adam Hermann, the pose selected being a characteristic phase of the trot. A trotting mastiff in the Muybridge photographs of A7ii- mals in Motion served as guide. This is the step that would commonly be used in a long chase. It suggests the grim, unrelenting, tireless pursuit of its prey, seen far away across the bare rocky hills of Southern California, and affords an interesting contrast to the pose of the skeleton in the "Asphalt Group", which stands excited, hesitant, feet wide apart.

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