Cynotherium sardous
The Sardinian dhole is an extinct insular canid which was endemic to what is now the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Corsica during the Middle-Late Pleistocene. It went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene around the time of human settlement of the islands.

Alberto Malatesta (original work) Marco Zedda, Antonio Brunetti and Maria Rita Palombo (republication) · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CynotheriumPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Canidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Canidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 3.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 3.6 Mya and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
9 occurrences of Cynotherium sardous on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
9 occurrences- Pliocene3%
- Pleistocene97%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Cynotherium sardous and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cynotherium sardous and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
74 taxa- Praemegaceros (Nesoleipoceros) cazioti4 sites
- Algarolutra majori3 sites
- Bufo viridis3 sites
- Microtus (Tyrrhenicola) henseli3 sites
- Prolagus sardus3 sites
- Rhagamys orthodon3 sites
- Bubo insularis2 sites
- Emys orbicularis2 sites
- Natrix2 sites
- Passeriformes2 sites
- "Colubrines" indet.1 site
- Accipiter gentilis1 site
- Accipiter nisus1 site
- Anura1 site
- Aquila1 site
- Aquila chrysaetos1 site
- Archaeolacerta bedriagae1 site
- Asoriculus1 site
- Athene1 site
- Aves1 site
- Buteo buteo1 site
- Buteo rufinus1 site
- Canis1 site
- Caprinae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Cynotherium sardous, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- Cynotherium malatestai, sp. nov. (Carnivora, Canidae) from the early middle Pleistocene deposits of Grotta dei Fiori (Sardinia, Western Mediterranean)2
- Body size of insular carnivores: evidence from the fossil record2
- The Island Rule in Large Mammals: Paleontology Meets Ecology2
- Upper Pleistocene Mammal Assemblage from Su Concali Quarry (Samatzai, Southern Sardinia, Italy)1
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview1
- Castiglione 3, un nouveau remplissage fosilifere d'age Pleistocene moyen dans le karst de la region d'Oletta (Haute-Corse)1
Each of the 9 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Cynotherium sardous
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Alberto Malatesta (original work) Marco Zedda, Antonio Brunetti and Maria Rita Palombo (republication)
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Cynotherium sardous was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCynotherium through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Studiati 1857