"We're gaining lots of new insight into the relationship between dire wolves and other canids," he says, "but there are still open questions."Īs to why the wolves disappeared, scientists only know that they vanished along with other big ice age creatures. That could mean there are missing genetic signatures, which could indicate that dire wolves did breed with these other animals, and could further help classify the species. Still, Wang notes the team was unable to get complete genomes from any of its specimens. This further suggests, she says, that dire wolves were a very different animal than these other creatures. That's unusual, Perri says, as even species as diverse as dogs and coyotes can produce offspring. When gray wolves and coyotes arrived from Eurasia, likely about 20,000 years ago, dire wolves were apparently unable to breed with them, as the researchers found no traces of genetic mixing.
Genetic analysis further revealed the predators probably evolved in the Americas, where they were the only wolflike species for hundreds of thousands-or perhaps millions-of years. As such, she says, dire wolves may have resembled "a giant, reddish coyote." But Perri says living in the warmer latitudes of North America may have given them traits more common to canids and other animals in these climates, such as red fur, a bushy tail, and more rounded ears. Artists-and Game of Thrones creators-have often depicted the predators as large timber wolves: bulky, gray, and ferocious. That could also mean a reimagining of what dire wolves looked like. "Based on the genetic data this team presents, I would support that reclassification."
"The Aenocyon genus was left in the historical dust bin, but it can be resurrected," says Xiaoming Wang, a vertebrate paleontologist and expert on ancient canids at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Dire wolves would become Aenocyon dirus, a designation proposed in 1918, but that scientists largely disregarded. The mounting evidence has convinced the team to recommend taking dire wolves out of the Canis genus entirely and putting them elsewhere in the larger Canid family, which-in addition to wolves and coyotes-includes foxes, jackals, and other doglike carnivores. Perri and her colleagues also recovered proteins from the collagen of a La Brea dire wolf, which supported the split between the species. "Even though they look like wolves, dire wolves actually have nothing to do with wolves," says Angela Perri, a zooarchaeologist at Durham University and one of the study's lead authors. The genetic material revealed a new evolutionary family tree, and a surprise: Dire wolves occupy their own lineage, separate from those that gave rise to African jackals, gray wolves, coyotes, and dogs by nearly 6 million years, the team reports today in Nature.
DIRE WOLF GAME ROOM FULL
They recovered about one-quarter of the nuclear genome and the full mitochondrial DNA across five individuals, ranging in age from about 13,000 to more than 50,000 years old. In the new study, researchers scoured North America trying to extract genetic samples from dozens of dire wolf remains at universities and museums. But the one thing that could have sealed the deal-dire wolf DNA-had been broken down by the tar of the pits. Scientists have long classified dire wolves as Canis dirus, putting them in the same genus as gray wolves, coyotes, and dogs. Because the skeletons of dire wolves are similar to those of gray wolves, the two animals were considered closely related. Hundreds of dire wolf skulls line the walls of the California museum.īut that's where most knowledge stops.
Many followed their prey into the sticky asphalt of what are now Los Angeles's La Brea Tar Pits, where they were trapped for the ages. They were about 20% bigger than today's gray wolves-the size of their skeletons often gives them away-and, like other wolves, they probably traveled in packs, hunting down bison, ancient horses, and perhaps even small mammoths and mastodons. "It's a fascinating study" that reveals just how distinct dire wolves were, says Robert Dundas, a vertebrate paleontologist and expert on the animals at California State University, Fresno, who was not involved with the work.Īrchaeologists know dire wolves lived in North America from about 250,000 to 13,000 years ago. Instead, researchers argue, they need an entirely new scientific classification. Now, the first analysis of dire wolf DNA finds they instead traveled a lonely evolutionary path: They are so different from other wolves, coyotes, and dogs that they don't belong in the genus that includes these animals. Dire wolves, which died out with mammoths and saber-toothed cats at the end of the last ice age, were long thought to be close cousins of gray wolves. One of North America's most famous ancient predators-and a favorite of Game of Thrones fans-emerged as mysteriously as it disappeared.
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