OXFORD, ENGLAND—According to a BBC News report, the nearly complete remains of an extinct species of fox (Dusicyon avus) have been recovered from a 1,500-year-old grave at the site of Cañada Seca in Argentina’s Patagonia region. Analysis of the fox’s bones indicates that it weighed between about 20 to 30 pounds, and that it consumed the same diet as the human who was buried with it. “This is a very rare find of having this fox that appears to have had such a close bond with individuals from the hunter-gatherer society,” said Ophélie Lebrasseur of the University of Oxford. Lebrasseur and her colleague Cinthia Abbona of the Institute of Evolution in Mendoza, Argentina, noted that a fox of the same species was recovered from an older grave in Argentina about 10 years ago, although its remains were not analyzed. Dusicyon avus went extinct about 500 years ago, after domestic dogs were introduced to Patagonia, the researchers concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Royal Society Open Science. To read about Bronze Age fox burials uncovered in northeastern Spain, go to “A Fox in the House.”
