Review of the mounted skins and skulls of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, held in museum collections

Abstract

Only nine skins of the extinct Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, are currently known in museum collections. In this article we present the results of locating these specimens with a special focus on the origins of two mounted skins in Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden and in the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden. Although only a few specimens were collected, their history is far more complicated than initially thought, and most of their documentary records are fragmented or lost.