blaire van valkenburgh

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Blaire Van Valkenburgh in The Bulletin: Broken Yellowstone wolf teeth reveal a theory about ice age extinctions

This may be a tale that only dentists can appreciate, but the teeth of dead Yellowstone wolves are helping scientists understand the life of predators more than 11,000 years ago.

Inside the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center is a collection of 160 skulls of adult Yellowstone wolves. By examining the skulls, along with other collections from around the country and world, UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Blaire Van Valkenburgh and her colleagues have theorized a relationship between the declining amount of prey available and how the big canines consume their wildlife kills.