The Falkland Islands Wolf and Reduced Date Range

There was a critter on the Falkland Islands that puzzled Charles Darwin and others, since it seemingly should not be there. It had several names such as the warrah, Falkland Islands wolf/fox. It became extinct partly because people wanted to kill it to own its fur. Some pinheads thought it was a threat to sheep.

Stuffed specimens exist in museums, and some interesting research involved taking samples of their mitochondrial DNA and comparing it (and mutations) with South American canids. The Warrah may have been a descendant of the maned wolf.

Falkland Islands warrah/fox/wolf, WikiComm / John Gerrard Keulemans (public domain), modified at Pixlr

So how and when did it get to the Falklands? The DNA testing is problematic for adherents of deep time because it conflicts with when secularists say canids entered South America. There is speculation that the warrah crossed land bridges, or possibly rafted on floating vegetation. New evidence suggests that Fuegian Indians were in the Falklands hundreds of years before Europeans, and they brought the warrah with them.

The warrah, or Falkland Islands wolf (Dusicyon australis, originally Canis antarcticus), aka the Falkland fox, was present on the Falkland Islands when the first European settlers arrived in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time, they believed they were the earliest to arrive on the uninhabited group of islands. These isolated islands are located at the bottom of the South Atlantic Ocean, several hundred kilometres east of South America.

To read it all, sail over to "The warrah—shrinking dates for the Falkland Islands wolf."