The dog family radiates
Canids arise in North America and stay there for 30 million years before spreading worldwide.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 11 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
The canid family originates and diversifies exclusively in North America, from the small fox-like Hesperocyon through three successive subfamily radiations. Two of those subfamilies — the bone-crushing borophagines and the archaic hesperocyonines — go entirely extinct, and only the third produces the wolves, foxes and jackals alive now. Canids do not reach the Old World at all until the Miocene. It is one of the best-documented cases of a family's entire history being confined to one continent before a late escape.