Falkland Islands wolf mystery solved › News in Science (ABC Science)

Falkland Islands wolf mystery solved › News in Science (ABC Science): "The 320-year-old mystery of the origins of the now-extinct Falkland Islands wolf and how it came to be the only land-based mammal on the island has been solved by Australian researchers.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Adelaide suggest the wolf may have walked to the island about 16,000 years ago during the last ice age.

The origin of the Falkland Islands wolf - which looked like a cross between a wolf and a fox - has been a natural history mystery since it was first encountered by European visitors in the late 1700s.

During his famous Beagle voyage, Charles Darwin was also mystified by the wolf's existence on the barren islands, almost 500 kilometres from the South American mainland."

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