Dusicyon

Dusicyon is an extinct genus of South American canids in the family Canidae. Its type species is the Falkland Islands wolf, Dusicyon australis, and the genus also holds Dusicyon avus, a mainland species that was widely distributed in the late Pleistocene from Uruguay through Buenos Aires Province to the far south of Chile. The British zoologist Oldfield Thomas established the genus in 1914 and at first placed the culpeo and other South American foxes in it, but those animals were moved to Lycalopex by Langguth in 1975. The two Dusicyon lineages are close relatives that split only about 16,000 years ago. Dusicyon avus is thought to have died out in the late Holocene, with the latest confirmed records dating to about 400 years ago in southernmost Patagonia.