Image made by Roman Uchytel.
The cave wolf (Canis lupus spelaeus) is an extinct glacial mammoth steppe-adapted wolf subspecies that lived during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (320,000-12,000 years ago). It inhabited Europe, where its remains have been found in many caves. Its habitat included the mammoth steppe grasslands and boreal needle forests. Modern European wolves derive most of their ancestry from Siberian wolf populations that expanded into Europe during and after the Last Glacial Maximum, but retain a minor fraction of their ancestry from earlier Late Pleistocene European wolves.
This short-legged white wolf is likely the direct ancestor of the Arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos), a cold-adapted white wolf subspecies from arctic North America. During MIS 8-3, its habitat included the mammoth steppe grasslands and boreal needle forests. It spread across all of Europe through the middle-high elevated mountains, and followed mountain glaciers down to the Mediterranean. This
