﻿THE NAMES OF THE LARGE WOLVES OF NORTHERN 

 AND WESTERN NORTH AMERICA 



By GERRIT S. MILLER, Jr. 



Examination of the skulls of the American wolves of the subgenus 

 Canis in the U. S. National Museum, shows that the general region 

 lying west of the Mississippi River and Hudson Bay, and north of 

 the Platte and Columbia rivers, is inhabited by animals of three well 

 defined types: (a) The timber-wolf type, distinguished by ex- 

 tremely large size (condylobasal length of skull in largest males 

 about 265 mm.) ; (b) the plains-wolf type, moderate in size (condy- 

 lobasal length of skull in largest males about 240 mm.), rostrum 

 broad, palate wide in proportion to its length; and (c)the tundra- 

 wolf type of the Arctic coast region, size as in the plains- wolf, 

 but rostrum slender and palate narrow in proportion to its length. 

 While the material at hand is not sufficient to form the basis of a 

 detailed monograph of the northern and western wolves, it has 

 enabled me to trace the history of the ten names which have been 

 applied to the animals. So far as I am aware, no previous attempt 

 has been made to allocate these names. 



Albus. — Canis lupus — albus Sabine, Franklin's Narr. Journ. Polar 

 Sea, p. 655, 1823. Type locality, Fort Enterprise, MacKenzie, 

 Canada. This name has been used for the Barren Ground wolf by 

 Preble (North Amer. Fauna, No. 27, p. 213, October 26, 1908), 

 though the great size of the animal mentioned by Sabine makes it 

 appear probable that the type specimen was an albinistic timber- 

 wolf. The name is preoccupied by Canis lupus albus Kerr, 1791 

 (Anim. Kingd., p. 137), applied to a Siberian wolf. 1 



1 As the Barren Ground wolf has received no other name, it may be known 

 as Canis tundrarum. Type: adult male (probably), skull No. 16748, U. S. 

 National Museum. Collected at Point Barrow, Alaska, by Lt. P. H. Ray. 

 Size much less than in the northern timber-wolf, the skull and teeth about 

 as in the plains-wolf of the northern United States, but rostrum and palate 

 narrower. Color said to be frequently white or whitish. Condylobasal length 

 of skull, 241.5; zygomatic breadth, 37. Specimens examined (all skulls): 

 Point Barrow, 2; northwest of Fort Yukon (about 100 miles), Alaska, 1; 

 Peel River, Yukon, 1. Three skulls from Fort Chimo, Ungava, appear to 

 represent the same animal. This wolf is decidedly larger than Canis lycaon 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 59, No. 15 



