page_title: Subspecies of Canis lupus
section_title: North America
hierarchical_section_title: Subspecies of Canis lupus / List of extant subspecies / North America
caption_attribution_description: Historical and present distribution of North American grey wolf subspecies based on the range map present in Edward A. Goldman's The wolves of North America Vol. II (1944). Most are still recognised by MSW3 (2005). Not included are subspecies historically recognised as Canis rufus, regardless of MSW3 recognition. Extinct C. l. alces left blank on account of missing pelts, thus leaving colour a mystery.
context_page_description: There are 38 subspecies of Canis lupus listed in the taxonomic authority Mammal Species of the World. These subspecies were named over the past 250 years, and since their naming, a number of them have gone extinct. The nominate subspecies is the Eurasian wolf Canis lupus lupus.
context_section_description: For North America, in 1944 the zoologist Edward Goldman recognized as many as 23 subspecies based on morphology. In 1959, E. Raymond Hall proposed that there had been 24 subspecies of lupus in North America. In 1970, L. David Mech proposed that there was "probably far too many subspecific designations...in use", as most did not exhibit enough points of differentiation to be classified as separate subspecies. The 24 subspecies were accepted by many authorities in 1981 and these were based on morphological or geographical differences, or a unique history. In 1995, the American mammologist Robert M. Nowak analyzed data on the skull morphology of wolf specimens from around the world. For North America, he proposed that there were only five subspecies of the wolf. These include a large-toothed Arctic wolf named C. l. arctos, a large wolf from Alaska and western Canada named C. l. occidentalis, a small wolf from southeastern Canada named C. l. lycaon, a small wolf from the southwestern U.S. named C. l. baileyi and a moderate-sized wolf that was originally found from Texas to Hudson Bay and from Oregon to Newfoundland named C. l. nubilus.
  The taxonomic classification of Canis lupus in Mammal Species of the World (3rd edition, 2005) listed 27 subspecies of North American wolf, corresponding to the 24 Canis lupus subspecies and the three Canis rufus subspecies of Hall (1981). The table below shows the extant subspecies, with the extinct ones listed in the following section.
caption: North American wolf subspecies distribution according to Goldman (1944) and Hall (1981). Hall split off C. l. griseoalbus from Goldman's C. l. occidentalis. These subspecies are included in MSW3 2005.
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