Data from: Postcranial diversity and recent ecomorphic impoverishment of North American gray wolves

Recent advances in genomics and palaeontology have begun to unravel the
complex evolutionary history of the gray wolf, Canis lupus. Still, much of
their phenotypic variation across time and space remains to be documented.
We examined the limb morphology of the fossil and modern North American
gray wolves from the late Quaternary (< ca.70 ka) to better
understand their postcranial diversity through time. We found that the
late-Pleistocene gray wolves were characterised by short-leggedness on
both sides of the Cordilleran-Laurentide ice sheets, and that this trait
survived well into the Holocene despite the collapse of Pleistocene
megafauna and disappearance of the “Beringian wolf” from Alaska. In
contrast, extant populations in the Midwestern United States and
north-western North America are distinguished by their elongate limbs with
long distal segments, which appear to have evolved during the Holocene
possibly in response to a new level or type of prey depletion. One of the
consequences of recent extirpation of the Plains (C. l. nubilus) and
Mexican wolves (C. l. baileyi) from much of the United States is an
unprecedented loss of postcranial diversity through removal of
short-legged forms. Conservation of these wolves is thus critical to
restoration of the ecophenotypic diversity and evolutionary potential of
gray wolves in North America.