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“Game of Thrones” may have excited viewers with tales of dragons and fictional heroes and heroines, but one aspect of the show was real, according to a new study: terrible wolves.
According to research published in the scientific journal Nature, terrible wolves existed from 125,000 years ago to 9500 years ago. However, they may have gone extinct because they were unable to mate with modern day gray wolves.
“Fearsome wolves are sometimes portrayed as mythical creatures – giant wolves prowling through icy, dark landscapes – but the reality turns out even more interesting,” said study co-author Kieren Mitchell of the ‘University of Adelaide, in a statement. “Despite the anatomical similarities between gray wolves and terrible wolves – suggesting that they might perhaps be related in the same way as modern humans and Neanderthals – our genetic results show that these two wolf species look much more like distant cousins, like humans and chimpanzees. “
Somewhere in southwestern North America in the late Pleistocene, a pack of terrible wolves (Canis dirus) feed on their dead bison, while a pair of gray wolves (Canis lupus) s’ approach in the hope of recovering. One of the terrible wolves rushes in to take on the gray wolves, and their confrontation allows for a comparison of the bigger, bigger, reddish-brown dreaded wolf to its smaller, gray relative. (Mauricio Antón / Nature)
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Researchers sequenced DNA from five terrible wolf fossils in the United States, marking the first time that terrible wolf DNA had been collected and studied.
“With this first ancient DNA analysis of terrible wolves, we revealed that the story of the terrible wolves we thought we knew – especially a close relationship with gray wolves – is actually much more complicated than we previously thought,” said Angela Perri, co-author of the study. added. “Instead of being closely related to other North American canids, such as gray wolves and coyotes, we discovered that the terrible wolves represent a branch that separated from others millions of years ago. , representing the last of a now extinct line.
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“When we started this study, we thought that terrible wolves were just empowered gray wolves, so we were surprised to learn how extremely different they were genetically, so much so that they probably wouldn’t. could not cross ”, co-author of the study Laurent Frantz explained. “Hybridization between Canis species is thought to be very common, it must mean that terrible wolves have been isolated in North America for a very long time to become so genetically distinct.”
Although gray wolves interbreeded with other species, such as dogs, coyotes, and jackals, the terrible wolf was a “very divergent line” that broke away from existing dogs around 5.7 years ago. million years ago, according to the study summary.
“While ancient humans and Neanderthals appear to have interbreeded, as gray wolves and modern coyotes do, our genetic data has provided no evidence that terrible wolves interbreed with living canine species,” added Mitchell. “All of our data indicates that the terrible wolf is the last surviving member of an ancient lineage distinct from all living dogs.”
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It is believed that terrible wolves were common during the Pleistocene era, with researchers adding that they had “an early New World origin” while gray wolves, coyotes and dholes “evolved in Eurasia and did not colonized North America only relatively recently ”.
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