Lycaon (genus)

Lycaon
Two dogs sharing a meal.
Dogs of the genus Lycaon eat mostly meat.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Order:Carnivora
Family:Canidae
Tribe:Canini
Genus:Lycaon
Brookes, 1827
Species

L. pictus (Temminck, 1820)
†L. sekowei Hartstone-Rose et al., 2010

Lycaon is a genus of canid. There are two known species: the extant Lycaon pictus, a canid with common names including "African wild dog", "painted dog", "ornate wolf", and "African hunting dog"; and the extinct, less cursorial Lycaon sekowei, known from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of South Africa. This hypercarnivorous and highly cursorial genus is distinguished by accessory cusps on the premolars. It branched off from the wolf-like canids lineage during the Plio-Pleistocene. Since then, Lycaon has become lighter and tetradactyl, but has remained hypercarnivorous.[1]

Some authors consider the extinct Canis subgenus Xenocyon as ancestral to both Lycaon and Cuon.[2][3]:p149

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hartstone-Rose, A.; Werdelin, L.; De Ruiter, D. J.; Berger, L. R.; Churchill, S. E. (2010). "The Plio-Pleistocene Ancestor of Wild Dogs, Lycaon sekowei n. sp". Journal of Paleontology. 84 (2): 299&ndash, 308. doi:10.1666/09-124.1.
  2. ↑ Cherin, Marco; Bertè, Davide F.; Rook, Lorenzo; Sardella, Raffaele (2013). "Re-Defining Canis etruscus (Canidae, Mammalia): A New Look into the Evolutionary History of Early Pleistocene Dogs Resulting from the Outstanding Fossil Record from Pantalla (Italy)". Journal of Mammalian Evolution. 21: 95. doi:10.1007/s10914-013-9227-4.
  3. ↑ Wang, Xiaoming; Tedford, Richard H.; Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.


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