8/13/2023 0 Comments Prehistoric wolf![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Though the new findings do help us to make sense of another, previous discovery: that there is no dire wolf DNA in any modern canids. “But given what we found, that's probably not possible,” Perri says. Armbruster’s wolf and Edward’s wolf, for example, were long thought to be common ancestors of dire and gray wolves, and a coyote ancestor. For one thing, the relationship between other prehistoric canids and later canids is suddenly being called into question. The study Perri participated in opens up whole new avenues of investigation into the life and evolution of the dire wolf. “And then modern humans come in and they can do it all.” Redrawing the Family Tree Their struggle to adapt later on was probably a factor in their extinction, she suggests: “They were hanging out by themselves for a very long time, and specialized in the way they do things,” she says. Before the arrival of humans, wolves and dogs, Perri explains, their only competition was probably from the saber-toothed cats. One of the most bizarre aspects of dire wolf evolution is their solitary presence in the Americas. Read more: What the Animal Kingdom Meant to Ancient Societies “Now we know they are just an insane example of convergent evolution,” Perri says. According to the genetic evidence she and her colleagues uncovered, the dire wolves and gray wolves parted evolutionary ways roughly 5.7 million years ago. In fact, Perri says, their closest living relatives are the African jackals. What they found was largely unexpected.Īs it turns out, dire wolves aren’t subspecies of gray wolves - or even close relatives, for that matter. Only after stumbling upon each other by accident did they all pool their efforts into one large study, published in Nature last year. Perri, who had long studied human-canid interactions and canid evolution, found she wasn’t the only one interested in finding an answer. Whether it was coincidence or not, in the years following Game of Thrones’ popularity, teams of researchers around the world began working on the dire wolf DNA problem independently. They also had a distinct preference for warmer, wetter climates (at least by Ice Age standards) and rarely ventured north of 42 degrees North latitude. Morphological evidence suggests they hunted, when necessary, in similar ways, though dire wolves may have had to hold on longer to their struggling prey. Perri adds that, because many dire wolf fossils are found with broken teeth, it’s believed that the animals relied on scavenging more than their distant gray wolf cousins. Much of their diet probably would’ve consisted of horses and camels, which evolved in North America before radiating elsewhere and eventually going extinct in their native land. But its body size throughout the Pleistocene - a period spanning roughly 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago and defined by repeated glacial and interglacial periods - was largely stable. On average, they would have been comparable in size to large gray wolves, though there were some differences: more robust frames and jaws, and slightly smaller feet, Perri says.Įvidence from the La Brea Tar Pits suggests the lineage was broken into two subspecies, one of which was slightly smaller. Though the prefix dire often means terrible, dire wolves weren’t quite the monstrosities that their name implies. ![]()
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