In this illustration, a group of dire wolves are feeding on a bison, while a pair of gray wolves approach in hopes of searching for litter.
Mauricio Anton
Game of thrones Author George R.R. Martin didn’t invent terrible wolves, the iconic pets that were given to the children of the Starks (even Jon Snow) in the book and TV series. It is a true dog species, but now extinct, that lived from 125,000 years ago to about 9,500 years ago. A new study reveals more about why they weren’t there anymore: Terrible wolves couldn’t make terrible little wolves with gray wolves today, even if they wanted to.
“ Despite anatomical similarities between gray wolves and terrible wolves – indicating that they could be related in the same way as modern humans and Neanderthals – our genetic results show that these two wolf species are very similar to distant cousins, like humans and chimpanzees, ” he said. Crane Mitchell of the University of Adelaide, co-author of the study Published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Gray wolves can mate with other similar animals, including African wolves, canines, wolves, and jackals, but the dire wolves were genetically different from mating with other groups. According to the study, dire wolves separated from the lineages of these wolves nearly 6 million years ago and were nothing but relatives of wolves today.
In a scene from HBO’s Game of Thrones, Turmond Giant, Spanish and John Snow’s terrible wolf, watch the ghost, John ride away.
Helen Sloan / HBO
“While ancient humans and Neanderthals seem to have interbreed, as do gray wolves and modern coyotes, our genetic data did not provide any evidence that dire wolves interbreed with any kind of living dog,” Mitchell said. “All our data indicate that the terrible wolf is the last surviving member of an ancient lineage that differs from all living canines.”
The research was led by Durham University in the United Kingdom, with the help of scientists from the University of Oxford and Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany, the University of Adelaide and the University of California, Los Angeles. The team sequenced the ancient DNA of five terrible wolf fossils from Wyoming, Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee, dating back more than 50,000 years.
The study was the first time ancient DNA was taken from dire wolves, and suggests that the species only evolved in North America for millions of years, and did not migrate as other species do between North America and Eurasia. Since wolves cannot mate with other species, the researchers hypothesized that some of the genetic traits that kept this species alive were not passed on to ancient tusks.
Over 4000 awesome wolves have been discovered from Priya Tar Dig In Los Angeles, the study indicated, but scientists don’t know much about the reasons for their disappearance. Gray wolves, also found in the pits, are still present today.
