Friday, November 06, 2009

Researchers have some answers for a perplexing mystery that struck Charles Darwin as a young man upon his visit to the Falkand Isalnds, which are located three hundred miles off southeastern South America. Darwin pondered how the small Falkland Islands Wolf, originally thought to be a unique fox, came to differ in size so vastly from island to island and where it had come from since no other mammal was native to the island. Force to use samples from museum specimens, since the wolf is extinct from being hunted for its fur, researchers have determined that the animal shares an common ancestor dating back some 70,000 years ago and its closest cousin is of a maned wolf still found in South America. But how it got to the Falklands in the first place is another mystery.

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