Far from a creature of myth in Game of Thrones, the dire wolf was an iconic canid during America’s Ice Age — with an unexpectedly complicated genetic heritage.
As it turns out, dire wolves aren’t subspecies of gray wolves — or even close relatives, for that matter. In fact, Perri says, their closest living relatives are the African jackals. According to the genetic evidence she and her colleagues uncovered, the dire wolves and gray wolves parted evolutionary ways roughly 5.7 million years ago. “Now we know they are just an insane example of convergent evolution,” Perri says.
, for example, were long thought to be common ancestors of dire and gray wolves, and a coyote ancestor.Though the new findings do help us to make sense of another, previous discovery: that there is no dire wolf DNA in any modern canids. This was a bit puzzling because canids love to interbreed, Perri says: “The fact that we have absolutely no genetic evidence that occurred most likely means that they were evolutionarily isolated.
For a study that was kicked off thanks to a popular TV show, it has had remarkably profound implications. “We thought this would be a pretty simple look at this relative of the gray wolf, but now we've opened up this whole new door,” Perri says. “We have this whole new genus that may have covered the whole of the Americas, so that's pretty exciting.”
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