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News Release 12-040
Coyotes "Shrank," Wolves Did Not, After Last Ice Age and Megafaunal Extinctions
Once large and wolf-like, coyotes ultimately became much smaller
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A young modern coyote looking at a fossil coyote skull in a southern California tar pit.
Credit: Doyle V. Trankina
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Fossil coyote, a composite skeleton at the UC-Museum of Paleontology.
Credit: F. Robin O'Keefe
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A coyote of today, smaller than its ancestors, roams the wintry wilderness.
Credit: u.S. National Park Service
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Gray wolf of modern times; compared with the coyote, it's kept its size across the millennia.
Credit: U.S. National Park Service
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Coyote on-the-hunt: for smaller prey than its kin of past ages once stalked.
Credit: U.S. National Park Service
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Across thousands of years, the gray wolf has largely continued to hunt the same prey.
Credit: U.S. National Park Service
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