Authorities in Alaska are investigating whether Candice Berner, a 32-year-old schoolteacher originally from Slippery Rock whose body was found in the woods of a remote Alaskan village, was the state's first recorded victim of a wolf attack.

An Alaska state trooper told Bob Berner, Ms. Berner's father, that a group of kids on ATVs had been riding alongside Ms. Berner for part of her nightly run on a rough road through the woods in the village of Chignik Lake. The kids eventually rode ahead of her, but on their trip back, they found a bloody glove in their path. They found her body off the road, badly mauled by an animal at around 6:45 p.m. Monday.

"She had teeth marks in throat," he said. "Her left arm and side both were pretty messed up."

Mr. Berner said Alaska State Trooper Daniel Blizzard told him they are "99 percent certain" that it was a wolf that attacked Ms. Berner.

Beth Ipsen, a spokeswoman for the Division of Alaska State Troopers, declined to say if state troopers were investigating whether a wolf killed Ms. Berner. She said state troopers were conducting a "death investigation," as they do with all unattended deaths. Ms. Berner's body was to be transported to Anchorage Wednesday, where an autopsy will be performed sometime today.

"It's way too early to point your finger in one way or another, and part of that is the unlikeliness of a wolf attack," Ms. Ipsen said.

If Ms. Berner's death was caused by a wolf, it will be the first fatal wolf attack ever recorded by the law enforcement agency, which was started in 1941, Ms. Ipsen said.

Wolf attacks are extremely rare and there have only been a handful of fatal wolf attacks in North America, said Mark McNay, who retired in 2007 as the wolf biologist from Alaska's Department of Fish and Game. Mr. McNay has recorded only two fatal attacks in Alaska since the early 1940s.

He raised the possibility that Ms. Berner died and then was scavenged, but he said that would be highly unusual as well. He said wolves seem to be more prone to attack humans if they have been in close contact with them.

Ms. Berner moved to Perryville, a small community in the northern Alaskan peninsula, in early August. Her father said she was drawn to teaching in diverse communities and loved the outdoors. She had been training for a half-marathon and documented her adventures in a blog titled "Adventures of an Alaskan Bush Teacher."

In her final entry, in December, she said she was taking "advantage of the bears being in hibernation to go for a few long runs."

Her father said she was tomboyish, an adventure-seeker and a risk-taker. Growing up she tried to keep up with her brothers, though she topped out at 4 feet, 11 inches. She power-lifted in high school and wrestled in grade school and was a Golden Gloves boxer.

"She liked to do all the things that girls aren't supposed to do, at least not traditionally," said her father, a professor of special education at Slippery Rock University.

When she graduated from Slippery Rock University in 2000, she packed up her rickety Chevy sedan, which the family nicknamed "The Humbler," and drove it to southern California, without a job or a plan. Fiercely independent, she lived out of her car and showered at the YMCA until she found a teaching job.

Her father said his daughter fell in love with the Alaskan peninsula, a network of small islands and villages separated by water and a lack of major roadways. She moved out there in August and commuted by plane to four small schools in remote communities.

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