Dire Wolf – Aenocyon dirus

[kingkazma]

before i post this want to say blaze's chart's helped a ton 


Dire Wolf - Aenocyon dirus



Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Aenocyon
Species: †A. dirus


Weight: 132.277 pounds-169.755 pounds (the largest specimens would have been 25% heavier than both the modern grey and extinct Berengia wolf. A very good-sized male could weigh 80 kg)
Height: 29.44-31.28 inches at the shoulder
Lifespan: unknown. Teeth have not been checked for this.
Range: en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/67/Canis_dirus_range.png
Extinction date: 4,000 years ago
Bite force(not psi): 1071.3579 pounds
Closest living relative: possibly N.A. canids (coyote, red wolf, and eastern wolf)
Pack size: in the excavation of pit 91 and box 1 (same pit?) at la Brea spanning from 2007-2014, 17 dire wolves have been found. Once 6 at a time, and once 11. It is unknown if they were all part of the same pack. Perhaps the whole pack was not stuck in the pits. Who knows. Due to the rendezvous behavior shown to occur in dire wolves there should normally be at least 1-2 adults left at the den. And if dire wolves had omegas, there'd be at least one wolf hanging back that may not have gotten stuck in the tar.


Habitat
The dire wolf's habitat ranged from plains and grasslands to forested mountain areas. In South America, it occupied areas of arid savannah. The dire wolf lived in several habitats, tropical marsh with thorn-scrub to deciduous forest including some component of nearby grassland, and from sea level up to 2255 m (7400 feet). Though capable of adapting to a wide range of habitat types and altitudes, Aenocyon dirus does not occur at high latitudes,unlike its close relative, Canis lupus. Territorial range is unknown. Possibly similar to that of the eastern wolf.




Eye color
Probably pale like most wild canids. Possibly Amber as in the eastern wolf.


Fur color

Due to their habits and occurrence, we can perhaps assume that the dire wolf had a coat colour similar to that of the eastern wolf or Iberian wolf with different shades. In their Savannah habitat, a reddish or sandy color is possible. The Floridian subspecies may have had a coat colour similar to the Iberian wolf. Like most wild canids, the dire wolf likely had a black tipped tail. A light orange nose bar is certainly possible. As is this colour occurring on the back of the ear. The ear would have also been medium-smaller sized, rounded, and furred inside. white facial markings and underbelly is almost certain. So are white shocks above the eyes and white on the legs. A dark foreleg stripe is present in some N.A. canids, so dirus May have had this as well. As red and eastern wolves were historically black and sometimes white, dire wolves may have occasionally been this colour. Imo this first recreation is almost perfect in color. It just requires more black and white markings. The ears are good too.
1.bp.blogspot.com/-lal9eORRq6E/UpnvHD1Fi-I/AAAAAAAAA-8/xuhklx3i53w/s1600/400px-Canis_dirus_2.jpg
As is this one
40.media.tumblr.com/97e733bea579ce9cf346e48f6677ac6a/tumblr_n7dom80CXK1r38ji3o4_1280.jpg
40.media.tumblr.com/11da3e72045ca79568833ffe2e14239e/tumblr_n7dom80CXK1r38ji3o5_400.jpg


Habits

Being a pack animal, dire wolves likely marked their territory vigorously in a matter similar to that of canis lupus. If found, they would probably kill intruders on sight. Pups may have exhibited coyote or gray wolf play behavior. They inhabited wet areas so perhaps they could swim well. It is known they chewed on bones often. They likely howled in a manner similar to eastern wolves, and perhaps had vocals similar to a coyote. Their denning habits are unknown. What is known is that pups start hunting at around 5 months of age, and that there is evidence of wolf dispersel. There is evidence that suggests that they had a hunting style similar to that of lycaon pictus and canis lupus. This involves making shallow bites and ripping chunks from the prey. Dire wolves may have used their oversized teeth to disembowl prey after restraining it.



Pack size and habits
The dire wolf ate larger game then the gray, and thus had a larger pack size. Packs of 11-30(babysitters not included as well as young pups) did occur throughout the Pleistocene. The pack habits were actually very similar to the wolf of today. The pups would be left with babysitters (likely more than two) at a rendezvous site until they were 5-6 months old. The adults would bring back bones and regurgitated meat in the meantime. Often a dire wolf would be severely injured in their pursuit of prey. Brain damage, broken canines, and shattered bones were not uncommon. These wolves were left behind during the hunt to babysit and would be brought back meat as well. However dire wolves had a high level of animosity towards each other as well. Skull with bite marks and gnashes have been found suggesting that the wolves fought quite often. It is unknown if dire wolves had pack wars against other packs like (unrelated but similar)hyenas and gray wolves do. The close knit wolf packs often got stuck in tar. All of the wolves wolves would get stuck at the same time, suggesting they attacked en masse. However when they did, they were trapped in the tar, defenseless. As they showed no learning pattern towards this, they may not have been as intelligent as the gray, which showed avoidance patterns towards the pit and the dire wolves themselves. It should be noted that in certain populations, male canis dirus had larger teeth than females. This suggests competition between males for females was extremely fierce. The females were also a bit smaller than the males.


Interspecies conflict
Mauricio Anton writes that in Rancho LaBrea there are bones and skulls of Smilodon and Dire wolf clearly punctured by sabers. I have no idea where he found this info. The wolves and smilodon probably acted much like hyenas and lions do today. If the cats found a few wolves at a kill, they would probably drive them off. But a full pack may have fought back, resulting in a all out fight. There is also the extremely likely possibility that the wolves would trail a smilodon pride and usurp the kill, and vice versa. Interactions with the short faced bear is unknown, but it would probably end with the wolves leaving the kill. It is known that during their reign, the dire wolf completely dominated the gray. It is unknown if they killed the latter's offspring. Coyotes likely had little to worry about a dire wolf pack, as they could outrun one with ease.


Prey
Dire wolves were not overly specialized carnivorans. The largest most abundant prey is usually what they fed upon. Stable isotopic analysis revealed that the la Brea dire wolves were preying on small percentages of ground sloths and mastadons. However the bulk of the dire wolf's diet was large bison and horse. Dire wolves also frequently preyed on large camels. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cannibalism occurred. What is surprising,however, is how often it happened. In one la Brea dire wolf skull, it was found to have eaten a VERY large amount of other dire wolves. This may be from competition, it may infanticide. We can't know for sure. But what we do know is that the dire wolf killed other dire wolves and ate them quite frequently. This is a quote from blaze :Anyonge and Roman (2006) cite Harris et al. (2003) as finding, using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios, that the dire wolf preferred to hunt ruminants (say bison) over any other herbivore. Anyonge and Roman (2006) also mention that Van Valkenburgh and Koepfli (1993) estimated the typical prey size of C. dirus to be within 100-300kg and the maximum between 300-600kg whoever they caution that this is based on an average of 50kg, using the averages they found (60-68kg) they suggest the values should be higher.





Special thanks to:
Blaze & redhole
Without you guys' info it would have been Hell doing this. You guys are a great help.

Source(s):

books.google.com/books?id=wcJ4GzdgnUQC&pg=PT55&lpg=PT55&dq=dire+wolf+closest+living+relative+coyote&source=bl&ots=3wOPm0WWEy&sig=QKoGalpbKlfo8dwzS7MUH7yTzpk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fMJwVKXsK5PdsASg34EI&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAw

books.google.com/books?id=degwyTaHLt8C&pg=PA107&lpg=PA108&focus=viewport&dq=dire+wolf+pack+size&output=html_text

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#Habitat_and_distribution
www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=canis%20dirus%20habitat&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CEEQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.csufresno.edu%2Fcsm%2Fees%2Fdocuments%2Ffacstaff%2Fdundas%2Fpublication%2FDundas-1999.pdf&ei=50RxVMylJ4LksAS14oBQ&usg=AFQjCNFKMv_wzUl0StV7OVMgERNgLwa1oQ&bvm=bv.80185997,d.cWc

m.youtube.com/watch?v=TPoFho8srO4


www.es.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_229/10-0127%20Syst.%20C%20in%20animals/Supplemental/Fox-Dobbs%20et%2007%20CJZ%2085-458.pdf

dx.doi.org/10.1671%2F0272-4634%282006%2926%5B209%3ANBMEFC%5D2.0.CO%3B2

www.tarpits.org/la-brea-tar-pits/current-excavations/pit-91

www.tarpits.org/blog/2013/04/01







this was from back in feburary so the info may be dated. i invite blaze to help me edit this accordingly. 


p.s. yes i have finished the drawing and i'll post it later.

[Infinity Blade]

I've looked into your references and the youngest extinction date I found was ~8k years ago. Is there a reference for the ~4k year old figure? Or am I missing something here?

[kingkazma]

yeah it's pretty dated. i'll check it later.

[Infinity Blade]

The legendary dire wolf may not have been a wolf at all


Dire wolves (red) fight off gray wolves for dibs on a bison kill in this artist’s reconstruction. MAURICIO ANTÓN

One of North America’s most famous ancient predators—and a favorite of Game of Thrones fans—emerged as mysteriously as it disappeared. 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. 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. Instead, researchers argue, they need an entirely new scientific classification.

“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.

Archaeologists know dire wolves lived in North America from about 250,000 to 13,000 years ago. 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. 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. Hundreds of dire wolf skulls line the walls of the California museum.

But that’s where most knowledge stops. Because the skeletons of dire wolves are similar to those of gray wolves, the two animals were considered closely related. Scientists have long classified dire wolves as Canis dirus, putting them in the same genus as gray wolves, coyotes, and dogs. But the one thing that could have sealed the deal—dire wolf DNA—had been broken down by the tar of the pits.

In the new study, researchers scoured North America trying to extract genetic samples from dozens of dire wolf remains at universities and museums. 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.

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. “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.

Perri and her colleagues also recovered proteins from the collagen of a La Brea dire wolf, which supported the split between the species. 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. Dire wolves would become Aenocyon dirus, a designation proposed in 1918, but that scientists largely disregarded.

“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. “Based on the genetic data this team presents, I would support that reclassification.”

That could also mean a reimagining of what dire wolves looked like. Artists—and Game of Thrones creators—have often depicted the predators as large timber wolves: bulky, gray, and ferocious. 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. As such, she says, dire wolves may have resembled “a giant, reddish coyote.”

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. 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. That’s unusual, Perri says, as even species as diverse as dogs and coyotes can produce offspring. This further suggests, she says, that dire wolves were a very different animal than these other creatures.

Still, Wang notes the team was unable to get complete genomes from any of its specimens. 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. “We’re gaining lots of new insight into the relationship between dire wolves and other canids,” he says, “but there are still open questions.”

As to why the wolves disappeared, scientists only know that they vanished along with other big ice age creatures. Perri suspects climate change may have killed off the large prey dire wolves depended on, and that gray wolves and coyotes survived because they could stalk smaller animals. Human hunting of dire wolf prey may have also played a role, as it’s likely the wolves occupied North America with early Native Americans for thousands of years.

“These animals were not mythological beasts,” Perri says. “They lived among us. Not that long ago, the world was full of creatures we will never see again.”

www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/legendary-dire-wolf-may-not-have-been-wolf-all


Here's the actual paper and its abstract.

Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage

Dire wolves are considered to be one of the most common and widespread large carnivores in Pleistocene America¹, yet relatively little is known about their evolution or extinction. Here, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of dire wolves, we sequenced five genomes from sub-fossil remains dating from 13,000 to more than 50,000 years ago. Our results indicate that although they were similar morphologically to the extant grey wolf, dire wolves were a highly divergent lineage that split from living canids around 5.7 million years ago. In contrast to numerous examples of hybridization across Canidae^2,3, there is no evidence for gene flow between dire wolves and either North American grey wolves or coyotes. This suggests that dire wolves evolved in isolation from the Pleistocene ancestors of these species. Our results also support an early New World origin of dire wolves, while the ancestors of grey wolves, coyotes and dholes evolved in Eurasia and colonized North America only relatively recently.

And an excerpt from the article.

We investigated canid phylogenetic relationships in greater detail using a range of species tree analyses^18,19 and D-statistics (Supplementary Information). These approaches produced concordant trees that support the monophyly of three primary lineages: dire wolves, African jackals and a clade comprising all other extant wolf-like canids (Fig. 2a, Supplementary Tables 6–8 and Supplementary Figs. 11–16). Although our species tree analyses provided equivocal results regarding the relationships among these lineages, grey wolves (genus Canis) are more closely related to African wild dogs (genus Lycaon) (Supplementary Fig. 19), dholes (genus Cuon) (Supplementary Fig. 21) and Ethiopian wolves (Supplementary Fig. 22) than to either dire wolves or African jackals (both genus Canis). This finding is consistent with previously proposed designations of the genera Lupulella²⁰ for the African jackals and Aenocyon¹⁵ for dire wolves.

www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x

[Infinity Blade]

It's no longer referred to Canis, but whatever, this was before the genetic study.

While the dire wolf is similar in size, research has found that they are considerably more heavily built than Pleistocene and extant grey wolf (Nowak 1979; Kurten & Anderson 1980; Anyonge & Roman 2006). The heads of Canis dirus have been shown to be more robust and able to withstand greater trauma (Binder et al. 2002). Nowak (1979) found that some Pleistocene grey wolf skulls were unusually small compared with contemporary and modern wolves, possibly indicating character displacement, the altering of one species in response to another, in regions where its range overlapped with the larger dire wolf (Brown & Wilson 1956; Anyonge & Roman 2006). Compared to modern Canis lupus, the dire wolf has been suggested to be between 8 and 15% heavier (Stock & Harris 1992; Kurten & Anderson 1980). Anyonge & Roman (2006) estimated dire wolf body mass based on equations relating body mass to cross sectional geometric properties and linear dimensions of the femur of living members of Canidae. Using these parameters, average masses were found and compared to extant species. The western dire wolf (C. dirus guildayi) had a mean mass of 60 kg and the eastern dire wolf (C. dirus dirus) averaged 68 kg (Anyonge & Roman 2006). The western dire wolf was, on average, 25% heavier than extant grey wolf, with the eastern dire wolf being 15% heavier than the western subspecies found in Rancho La Brea (Anyonge & Roman 2006). This is heavier than the grey wolf, which ranges from 12 kg to 80kg, with a mean of 40 kg (Mech 1970; Mech 1974; Macdonald 1984). While deemed to be heavier than modern grey wolf, western dire wolves have relatively shorter limbs (Stock and Lance 1948 as found in Anyonge & Roman 2006). Overall, Canis dirus’ increased body mass and shorter limbs indicate the dire wolf had a stockier build than the slimmer grey wolf with which it coexisted.

www.researchgate.net/profile/Branden-Neufeld/publication/328549011_The_Dire_Consequences_of_Specializing_on_Large_Herbivores/links/5fd3860845851553a0ab5a47/The-Dire-Consequences-of-Specializing-on-Large-Herbivores.pdf

[Exalt]

So I have two questions that I would like to ask, both relating to the number of specimens found at La Brea.

1. If there are so many specimens, why have the teeth not been tested?

2. Some argue that Smilodon was not social because it wasn't intelligent enough to avoid the tar pits more often...but doesn't the sheer number of Dire Wolf specimens found there defeat that argument? Am I missing something here?

[Infinity Blade]

Sept 6, 2023 4:40:22 GMT 5 Exalt said:

So I have two questions that I would like to ask, both relating to the number of specimens found at La Brea.

1. If there are so many specimens, why have the teeth not been tested?

2. Some argue that Smilodon was not social because it wasn't intelligent enough to avoid the tar pits more often...but doesn't the sheer number of Dire Wolf specimens found there defeat that argument? Am I missing something here?

1. What kind of testing are you referring to here? Isotope analysis for what they ate? Tooth fractures or wear? Dire wolf remains are definitely common at Rancho La Brea. IIRC they're actually the most abundant fossil animal at the site.

2. Smilodon's degree of sociality is a matter of debate (although some evidence leans me towards at least S. fatalis being social in some way), but I haven't heard that argument being used. It doesn't make any sense for the reason you pointed out here. Hell, even elephants (mammoths) have been found in the tar pits, and elephants are very smart, social animals.

[Exalt]

Sept 6, 2023 7:08:08 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

The first post in this thread(granted it is eight years old) says: "Lifespan: unknown. Teeth have not been checked for this."

I probably should have quoted it, given the age.

EDIT: I'm certainly aware that it's argued, but that particular argument seems baffling to me, so I was wondering if there was some weird trait about the dire wolf that made it stand up to scrutiny.

I'd be up for discussing Smilodon's sociality of course, but that would need a different thread.

EDIT 2: For some reason, my attempt to quote you here is broken.

[Infinity Blade]

Sept 6, 2023 7:19:37 GMT 5 Exalt said:

Sept 6, 2023 7:08:08 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

The first post in this thread(granted it is eight years old) says: "Lifespan: unknown. Teeth have not been checked for this."

I probably should have quoted it, given the age.

EDIT: I'm certainly aware that it's argued, but that particular argument seems baffling to me, so I was wondering if there was some weird trait about the dire wolf that made it stand up to scrutiny.

I'd be up for discussing Smilodon's sociality of course, but that would need a different thread.

EDIT 2: For some reason, my attempt to quote you here is broken.

Oh. Well, that could just boil down to the level of interest to determine A. dirus’ lifespan, which in this case would be “not much” (I tried looking through the literature for estimates, but I didn’t find anything). Scientists have everything they need to determine say, how hard an orca bites as well, but no one has bothered to determine that too.