WildFact
›
Information Section
›
Extinct Animals
›
Prehistoric animals
Ancient Dogs, Bear-dogs & Direwolves
Ancient Dogs, Bear-dogs & Direwolves
|
Ancient Dogs, Bear-dogs & Direwolves
|
Epicyon haydeni compared to Canis lupus by Mauricio Anton
 *This image is copyright of its original author
Dire Wolves (Canis dirus) in La Brea Tarpits and Museum
Credit to @labreatarpits  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
A reconstructed head of an ancient dog that's over 4,000 years old from the Orkney islands of Scotland: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/re...ncient-dog
Based on the size of its skull, the scientists believe the dog must have been roughly the size of a large collie and had features similar to a European grey wolf. A gray wolf for comparison: https://www.123rf.com/photo_81434338_clo...light.html
This year, a number of frozen canids from the Pleistocene were discovered in Yakutia (Sakha Republic) in the Russian Far East, and the latest is a 18,000-year-old puppy called 'Dogor' ('Friend' in Yakut) that is suspected to be from the early kind of dog, or transitional wolf-dog: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1...-discovery, https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-gen...py-0012914, https://www.rbth.com/history/331347-preh...in-siberia, https://www.larazon.es/ciencia/20191128/...tgseu.html
Credit: Sergey Federov of the Centre for Paleogenetics Getty: Earlier specimens: The 14,300-year-old Tumat puppies of Yakutia. Credit: North-Eastern Federal University / Siberian Times: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-his...py-0012518 Severed head of a wolf that is over 40,000 years old and bigger than that of a modern wolf, found by Pavel Yefimov on the banks of the Tirekhtyakh River in summar last year: https://www.livescience.com/65677-severe...ussia.html, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/j...-years-old Credit: Albert Protopopov / The Siberian Times
Diré Wolf (Canis dirus) skull in AMNH in New York City
Credit to @chasingmammoth  *This image is copyright of its original author
  
Turns out the dire wolf isnt closely related to wolves at all
North America during the late Pleistocene: a pack of dire wolves (red hair) are feeding bison while a pair of grey wolves approach in the hopes of scavenging. Mauricio Antón, Author provided  *This image is copyright of its original author Dire wolves went extinct 13,000 years ago but thanks to new genetic analysis their true story can now be told Thanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 years, until it became extinct towards the end of the last ice age around 13,000 years ago. While in popular culture the dire wolf is portrayed as a giant predator hunting in snow-covered, northern landscapes, most scientists instead agree that the dire wolf was a very close cousin of the grey wolf – the living species from which the dog was domesticated. Our research published in the journal Nature shows that both of these characterisations are mistaken. For the first time, we were able to sequence ancient DNA from remains of the now-extinct dire wolf, providing surprising new insights into its origins and biology. In addition to the grey wolf there are eight related wolf-like species alive today, including the coyote, African wild dog, and three species of jackal. We originally expected our genetic data to confirm what was already known based on looking at the size and shape of their bones: the dire wolf was just a large grey wolf or a very close relative. Evolving depictions of the dire wolf In contrast to its depiction in Game of Thrones, the fossil record of the dire wolf shows it actually lived in temperate or tropical areas of the Americas. The grey wolf on the other hand is often found in the Arctic or other high-latitude areas, and all those in North America today descend from a single colonisation around 20,000 years ago. In evolutionary terms, this means the two species may have only encountered each other relatively recently. Though dire and grey wolves then shared the same environment for thousands of years, our new genetic data revealed that they did not interbreed. This was surprising, given that interbreeding between wolf-like species tends to be a rule rather than the exception. We concluded that the dire wolf must have been geographically isolated for a long time to build up such a pronounced biological difference that it could no longer interbreed with the grey wolf when they met again in North America. The science suggests we should imagine the dire wolf as a very different animal to the grey wolf. When the two species did finally meet, they are likely to have already evolved very different behaviours, diets and appearances. Although we have no evidence about soft tissues or hair colour, palaeoartist Mauricio Antón represented them in the picture at the top of this article as more like a giant dhole (a wolf-like animal found in Asia), with short, reddish hair and larger ears for improved thermoregulation. Fate of a unique lineage So why did the dire wolf disappear, but not the grey wolf or other wolf-like species? Most scientists agree that the dire wolf specialised in hunting large herbivores, many of which – including horses, bison and camels – became extinct or drastically declined in North America around 13,000 years ago. The disappearance of their prey almost certainly drove the dire wolf extinct. In contrast, the more flexible and adaptable grey wolf can survive on a greater variety of food sources. Our new results help to explain these observations by showing that dire wolves probably evolved to become specialised over millions of years, meaning it was likely to have been very hard for them to adapt to rapid changes in their environment and prey. Plus, while some animal species – like the grey wolf – can sometimes evolve new adaptations after interbreeding with related species, this apparently wasn’t possible for the dire wolf. In the end, our results highlight just how much biological diversity has been lost in the recent past, as no living members of the dire wolf lineage now survive. The dire wolf thus represents yet another cautionary tale about how vulnerable specialised species are to rapid environmental changes, such as those driven by climate change or invasive species. Full study: Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage
Beardog
Cedit to @laelap  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Dire Wolf (Canis dirus)
Credit to @laelaps  *This image is copyright of its original author
A late Pleistocene fossil from Northeastern China is the first record of the dire wolf (Carnivora: Canis dirus) in Eurasia
Quote:The dire wolf was one of the successful top predators in North America during the Pleistocene. It is best known from the southern part of North America, and it even immigrated to South America. Fossils of dire wolves are very rare north of 42° North latitude in North America. That distribution supported the belief that the low temperatures and ice sheets in the higher latitudes of North American formed an insurmountable barrier for the dispersal of dire wolves. Here we report the first record of the dire wolf fossil in Eurasia. The fossil is a partial mandibular fragment with a tooth recovered from a Late Pleistocene underwater sand mine site near the city of Harbin in Northeastern China. Other mammalian fossils from the same site suggest that this dire wolf coexisted with the typical Mammuthus-Coelodonta fauna of Eurasia. The newly discovered specimen has a huge m1; much larger than gray wolves and other large canids from the same region. The massive m1 trigonid accounts for a high percentage of its overall length. The m1 talonid is reduced, but retains a small entoconid. The m2-3 alveoli suggest that the two teeth were smaller than those of the gray wolf. The combination of these morphologies is present only in the dire wolf. When the body mass spectra of medium and large-bodied carnivores from Asia and North America were compared, the Asian dire wolf occupies a position nearly overlapping the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta ultima). During the Late Pleistocene, C. crocuta ultima was one of the most widely distributed and dominant carnivores in Asia. Competition from hyenas may have kept dire wolf Asian populations at very low levels leading to their rarity as fossils rare in Asia.
Hello,
Do you have limb bones measurements concerning Epicyon Haydeni please? I would like to evaluate its shoulder height because i think that 1 meter is really large, it is the shoulder height of a lion or a tiger...
No, it's a field of study that I rarely read
Broad questions that address evolutionary history, genetics, ecology, behavior, conservation, yes.
In Europe we have also large amphicyonidae as this paper suggests:
New fossils of Amphicyonidae (Carnivora) from the middle Miocene (MN6) site of Carpetana (Madrid, Spain) - 2020. Quote:Herein, we present a study of an interesting sample of fossils of the giant amphicyonid Megamphicyon giganteus (Schinz, 1825) from the Spanish middle Miocene (MN6) site of Carpetana (Madrid city), obtained during public works for the Madrid underground in 2008. Although the dentition of this species is known from other sites, the postcranial bones are very poorly known, and the new material provides new data on the locomotor adaptations of this spectacular predator, and allows an estimation of its body mass, which would be around 600 kg. Surprisingly, despite this giant size, the morphology of both femur and tibia shows that this animal exhibited higher cursorial capacity than large extant carnivorans, such as bears, which together with a high degree of pronation/supination movement of the forearm, reveals adaptations of M. giganteus to occupy the niche of active top predator in middle Miocene ecosystems. |
| Users browsing this thread: |
| 1 Guest(s) |