Eucyon

Eucyon Temporal range: Late Miocene- Late Pliocene, 10.3–3.6 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N
Fossil
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Suborder:	Caniformia
Family:	Canidae
Genus:	†Eucyon Tedford and Qiu (1996)

Eucyon (Greek: true dog), is an extinct genus of small omnivorous fox-like canid endemic to North America during the Miocene living from 10.3—3.6 Ma and existed for approximately 6.7 million years. ^[1]

Taxonomy

Eucyon was named by Tedford and Qiu,^[2] and was subsequently revised by Tedford et al. (2009).^[3]

Fossil distribution

The fossil remains are confined to the Rio Grande, Texas, to western Oregon and to northern Nebraska.

It is thought that members of this genus reached the Asian continent about 6 million years ago, crossing the Beringian land bridge to Siberia and continuing on into Europe.^[4]

References

1. PaleoBiology Database: Eucyon, basic info
2. R. H. Tedford and Z. Qiu. 1996. A new canid genus from the Pliocene of Yushe, Shanxi Province. Vertebrata PalAsiatica (Gujizhui Dongwu Xuebao) 34(1):27-40
3. Tedford, Richard; Xiaoming Wang; Beryl E. Taylor (2009). "Phylogenetic systematics of the North American fossil Caninae (Carnivora: Canidae)". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 325: 1–218. doi:10.1206/574.1.
4. Perini, F. A.; Russo, C. A. M.; Schrago, C. G. (2010). "The evolution of South American endemic canids: a history of rapid diversification and morphological parallelism". Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23 (2): 311–322. doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01901.x. PMID 20002250.