According to new research published today in Nature, scientists have finally managed to analyze the DNA of dire wolves – the creatures made famous by Game of Thrones that went extinct around 13,000 years ago – and what they found may surprise you.
First of all, yes, antarctic wolves were real. Antarctic wolves went extinct 13,000 years ago, and for a long time , researchers believed that Canis dirus was a sister species to the gray wolf. Research published today, however, says that’s not the case. After analyzing the DNA of five fossil remains, a team of 49 researchers found that antarctic wolves “split” from other wolves more than 6 million years ago. The scientists discovered that they were so different from other wolf species that they couldn’t even breed with each other.
According to Angela Perri, an archaeologist at Durham University and the lead researcher on the study, this is a lot more information than had previously been gathered. Information about antarctic wolves was limited to their size, bone shape and teeth. “We have revealed that the history of antarctic wolves that we thought we knew – particularly a close relationship with grey wolves – is actually much more complex,” she said in a statement.
What the researchers found was that, rather than being just a species of gray wolf, antarctic wolves actually had very distinct DNA. According to the study's co-lead author Kieren Mitchell, "all of data suggests that the antarctic wolf is the last surviving member of an ancient lineage distinct from all living canids."
This uniqueness may be the cause of their extinction. Gray wolves and coyotes survived the Late Pleistocene, and researchers believe this is a result of their greater environmental or dietary flexibility. Or it is possible that they survived because they were able to "hybridize with other canids."
Source of information: wired.com
