Talk:Canis arnensis

Quality Assessment
I have added WikiProject Dogs to this article (which provides a quality assessment criteria for all dog-like canids) and have reviewed the article for quality. The article is short and would benefit from further development, however it is well-referenced to WP:RELIABLE sources and warrants C-Class based on the given criteria. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  01:03, 3 June 2017 (UTC) on behalf of WikiProject Dogs and WikiProject Mammals.

Reconstruction
I'd like to do a pencil crayon reconstruction of this taxon, and would like some advice. Considering it is basal to golden jackals, what would that entail in terms of phylogenetic bracketing? Any morphological features I should take into account? Just looking at the skulls, it would appear to have looked like an Ethiopian wolf Mariomassone (talk) 00:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Just too keep it safe, I'd make it slightly more generic than downright drawing it as a golden jackal, for example. And without giving it any unique features, at least drawing it in a way so it doesn't look precisely like another extant species. But William would probably be better at giving you specifics. FunkMonk (talk) 01:27, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Ahh, my favorite pair of paleo-artists at work once again. A number of Italian scientists have done much work on the canids of Western Europe spanning the past 2 million years, with Cherin describing arnensis in the "Description" section of this article as a phenotype somewhere between a wolf and a jackal. So your scope is fairly broad and you may employ "artistic license" as you see fit! I concur that based on the skull morphology there is a resemblance to simensis, so perhaps a fusion of simensis and aureus is the best approach. I look forward to seeing the creation! William Harris •   (talk) •  09:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * What colour would a basal Canis be? Like the black-backed jackal? I know pure black is out of the question. Also, any notes on limb or tail length? Mariomassone (talk) 10:38, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * It is unclear what the colour may have been. We know that they came with a loss of precipitation and into "open, dry landscapes". We might even consider Steppe wolf colouring, just to be conservative, or a merging of both steppe wolf and black-backed jackal. I will need to dig through some research papers over the next few days to ascertain if there were any skeletal remains other than some teeth or a skull - morphologists make all sorts of extrapolations based on just those. William Harris •   (talk) •  09:00, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Marko Cherin 2014 has done the most work on this - Re-Defining Canis etruscus (Canidae, Mammalia): A New Look into the Evolutionary History of Early Pleistocene Dogs Resulting from the Outstanding Fossil Record from Pantalla (Italy). There appears to be nothing other than skulls and teeth available. He compared arnensis, etruscus, lupus and the 3 jackals. And just to confuse things for us, his finding was: "As a matter of fact, considering C. etruscus and C. arnensis as wolf-like and jackal-like dogs, respectively, is an oversimplification not always valid, because C. arnensis is more similar to C. lupus than C. etruscus regarding some cranial characters ..."

Lucenti & Rook 2016 advise us that:

"Compared to the modern wolf, Canis lupus, C. arnensis is significantly smaller; in fact, its size lies between that of the coyotes and the jackal. In cranial and dental morphology, this fossil species shows a mixed pattern of features between that of wolves and that of the jackal group (C. aureus, C. mesomelas, C. adustus and C. anthus.)"

I think that means there is little guidance for you, Mario, and you will be looking at a body morphology that is simensis-like or even anthus-like and sized somewhere between a coyote and a jackal. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  10:57, 7 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll go for something looking like a simensis-anthus hybrid then. Mariomassone (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I think that would be the best approach. William Harris •   (talk) •  08:42, 8 March 2018 (UTC)