Talk:Dusicyon avus

Extinction dates
I have added one citation about a well-argued extinction estimate (Prevosti et al. 2011), however I couldn't find anything to substantiate the claim about remains from "1600 years ago" (which I have interpreted as around the year 400). , could you add where that information came from? I think we'll also need a cite for the inferred pack-hunting behaviour (tag added). -- Elmidae (talk) 13:03, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * , you noted on my userpage, "Well, what I can say is that the comment on the article Dusicyon avus is unclear. I meant 1600 years BP, and isn't BP the same as 'years ago'?"
 * I might have mixed up some dates there, as I'm not really used to BP as a time indicator. I think that notation makes increasingly less sense as you get close to the presence, as it's calibrated to 1950 (and how many people even know that?) and the error as applied to "today" becomes significant at shorter intervals. How about using CE/BCE here, as suggested in WP:ERA?
 * That would render the dates in the pre-revision version as:
 * - became extinct 4000-6000 BCE
 * - 'latest records' 400 (CE)
 * - oldest dog records ~1000 (CE)


 * However, you do see the issue here. If they became extinct 4-6k BCE, how can the 'latest records' be from 400 CE? Should this be prephrased with "some remains that may be of D. avus were dated as from ~400 CE", or some such expression of uncertainty? And in any case, this is a claim that would require a citation. Hence the latest playing-it-safe edit from . Can you dig up the source for this statement, and clarify it?-- Elmidae (talk) 08:04, 23 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks to both of you. I'd just like to add that we really would need a good reference (not just someone's speculation based on distantly-related canids) for pack-hunting behaviour in this species. It was very closely related (divergence less than 16,000 years ago) from the Falklands wolf, whose behaviour was recorded and doesn't seem to have included pack hunting. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC)