New clues may explain the mysterious origins of the Falklands wolf

Charcoal, bones, and tools suggest Indigenous seafarers inhabited the Falklands. It’s possible they may have brought their canine companions along. When Charles Darwin arrived at the Falkland Islands in 1833, the lone mammal he saw wandering its desolate shores was an odd fox-like creature. Darwin and other European settlers assumed that the Falklands, also known as Islas Malvinas and located several hundred miles east of the Argentina coastline, were uninhabited. There were no settlements and no people who could have ferried the enigmatic Falkland fox, also called the warrah, to this cold, scrubby archipelago. The warrah, they decided, must have made its own way across the sea. Scientists later hypothesized the foxes could have made it there by rafting on debris or hopping across ice floes during the last Ice Age. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/falkland-islands-wolf-fox-origin-people But a new study, published in Science Advances on October 27, combines archaeology and ecology to suggest humans may have inhabited these islands before Europeans, and perhaps brought their canine companions as well. The paper opens new possibilities for the history of the Falklands, a rugged and still disputed land, and could help us better understand this mysterious member of the dog family.