- Source: Vulpes qiuzhudingi
Vulpes qiuzhudingi is an extinct species of fox that lived during the Neogene period in the Himalayas. It was primarily carnivorous. The fossils, dating from the Pliocene epoch between 5.08 and 3.60 million years ago, were discovered in the Zanda Basin and Kunlun Mountains of Tibet. It was named after Qiu Zhuding, a paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The species is believed to be the ancestor of Vulpes lagopus, the modern Arctic fox, which would support the "Out of Tibet" theory: namely, that a number of current Arctic species trace their ancestry to species that originally inhabited the Tibetan Plateau.