term basal is used to describe a lineage that forms a branch diverging nearest to the common ancestor. Wolf genetic sequencing has found the Beringian wolf to be basal to all other gray wolves except for the modern Indian gray wolf and Himalayan wolf. As of 2020, the oldest known intact wolf remains belongs to a mummified pup dated 56,000 YBP that was recovered from the permafrost along a small tributary of Last Chance Creek near Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. A DNA analysis showed that it belonged to the Beringian wolf clade, that the most recent common ancestor of this clade dates to 86,700–67,500 YBP, and that this clade was basal to all other wolves except for the Himalayan wolf. Different genetic types of gray wolf A haplotype is a group of genes found in an organism that are inherited together from one of their parents. A haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a single mutation inherited from their common ancestor. Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) passes along the maternal line and can date back thousands of years. A 2005 study compared the mitochondrial DNA sequences of modern wolves with those from thirty-four specimens dated between 1856 and 1915. The historic population was found to possess twice the genetic diversity of modern wolves, which suggests that the mDNA diversity of the wolves eradicated from the western US was more than twice that of the modern population. A 2007 study compared mDNA sequences of modern wolves with those from Beringian wolves. The twenty Beringian wolves yielded sixteen haplotypes that could not be found in modern wolves, compared with seven haplotypes that were found in thirty-two modern Alaskan and Yukon wolves. This finding indicates that Beringian wolves were genetically distinct from modern wolves and possessed greater genetic diversity, and that there once existed in North America a larger wolf population than today. Modern Alaskan wolves have not descended from the Beringian wolves but from Eurasian wolves which migrated into North America during the Holocene. A 2010 study compared mDNA sequences of modern wolves with those from 24 ancient wolf specimens from western Europe dated between 44,000 and 1,200 years before present (YBP). The study found that the sequences could be allocated into two haplogroups. Haplogroups 1 and 2 could be found among wolves across Eurasia but only haplogroup1 could be found in North America. The ancient wolf samples from western Europe