Although most people know hideous wolves from their many scene-stealing performances in Game of Thrones, they didn’t come straight from the mind of George RR Martin. In fact, scientists have known about the long-extinct creature since the mid-1800s.
Until recently, it was generally believed that the terrible wolf (The dog is dim) was essentially a more muscular relative of the gray wolf (Wolf), in part because their skeletons are so similar. But a new study published in Nature suggests the two species share much less than their appearance suggests.
It all started when archaeologist Angela Perri, of Durham University in the UK, set out on an expedition across North America to locate wolf fossils from museum collections and see if she could extract DNA from them. Her attempt was successful: As National Geographic According to reports, Perri and her associates were able to sequence the genomes of five dire wolf fossils from Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and Wyoming. The remains date from 50,000 years ago to about 13,000 years ago (around the time when terrible wolves became extinct).
After comparing the series of terrible wolves with those of gray wolves and several other canids, the researchers found that terrible wolves and gray wolves diverged genetically from their common ancestor about 5.7 million years ago. Such as Scientific American explains that their morphological similarity appears to be an example of convergent evolution; in other words, they developed similar traits because their lifestyle was similar, not because their DNA was similar.
Based on these findings, it is possible that dire wolves have spent millions of years in America, far from the gray wolves in Eurasia. In that case, it could have been the eventual migration of other species – even humans – that threatened terrible wolves with extinction.
“The question now becomes: is their extinction related to climate and environmental changes, or do humans and possibly other wolves and dogs and [diseases] come help push them out? Perri told National Geographic.
The study could also influence the scientific classification of the dire wolf. With a weaker genetic link to the Canis gender, it may need to be shifted to its own gender. But even when that happens, chances are we will still call them “ terrible wolves ” in casual conversation – just as we do with koala bears, electric eels, and other animals with deceptive monikers.
[h/t Scientific American]