The second reason is that humans also probably hunted them heavily. The first reason is that humans probably hunted animals they depended on for food into extinction. And there were probably a number of reasons for why it did. Which is a pretty impressive feat considering Dire Wolves loved to eat horses.Īs was the case with a lot of animals which lived around the cusp of the Last Ice Age, the Dire Wolf went extinct about 11,000 years ago. Which is approximately how much bigger they would have been as compared to the largest modern dogs.Īnother interesting fact about the Dire Wolf is they had a bite-force that could not only slice through flesh but most likely could break bones so it could get to the marrow inside them. That would have made them about 25 percent bigger than Gray Wolves. Dire Wolves were approximately 5 feet long and weighed around 150 pounds. Some of the most interesting facts about the Dire Wolf is its size and weight statistics. Not only did they share the same habitat and possibly hunt the same prey, it is also likely that they hunted each other! A thousand of Dire Wolf and Sabre-tooth Tiger fossils have been found in The La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles. However, Dire Wolves not only had to compete with Gray Wolves, but they also had to compete with Sabre-tooth Tiger. And while there is no evidence that these two species of animals were mortal enemies, it is probably likely that both of them competed for the same prey. So while they aren’t a direct descendant to dogs, they are related.ĭire Wolves were living comfortably in North America when Grey Wolves crossed the Siberian Land Bridge into North America. Dire wolves are more closely related to Grey Wolves – a species in which all dogs are descended from. The larger bone set of the dire wolf compared to gray wolves living today would have created a much broader. Scientists propose a maximum weight of 150 pounds (although some sources show from 125 to 175 lbs.). While dire wolves are related to dogs, they are more like a distant cousin to them. Dire wolves stood just over 2 feet tall (between 27 to 32 inches) and weighed on average 110 pounds. However, that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. If you look at Dire Wolf pictures, then you might think that these animals were like large dogs. It was first discovered in the mid-nineteenth century and was named by Joseph Leidy in 1858. It lived approximately 240,000 years ago to 11,000 years ago – what is also known as the Rancholabrean North American Land Mammal Age. It is one of, if not the largest known genus of canid.Dire Wolf was one of the largest ancestral canines to have ever walk the Earth. Epicyon had a massive head and powerful jaws, giving its skull a lion-like shape rather than having a skull similar in shape to that of a wolf. Epicyon was about 1.5 m (5 ft) long, and is estimated to have had a weight of 91–136 kg (200–300 lb). Epicyon existed for about 15.5 million years. It lived from the Hemingfordian age of the Early Miocene to the Hemphillian of the Late Miocene (20.6-5.330 Mya. Nowak states the dietary characteristics are primarily carnivorous as well as partially omnivorous.Įpicyon ("near dog") is a large extinct canid genus of the subfamily Borophaginae ("bone-crushing dogs"), native to North America. The Dire Wolf's teeth were similar to the Gray Wolf's, only slightly larger, pointing to a hypercarnivorous to mesocarnivorous activity. The legs of the Dire Wolf were proportionally shorter and sturdier than those of the Gray Wolf, and its brain case was smaller than that of a similarly sized gray wolf. Despite superficial similarities to the Gray Wolf, there were significant differences between the two species. guildayi weighed on average 60 kilograms (132 lb) and C. The Dire Wolf co-existed with the Gray Wolf in North America for about 100,000 years. Unlike the Gray Wolf, which is of Eurasian origin, the Dire Wolf evolved on the North American continent, along with the Coyote. lthough it was closely related to the Gray Wolf and other sister species, Canis dirus was not the direct ancestor of any species known today. The Dire wolf ( Canis dirus) is an extinct carnivorous mammal of the genus Canis, and was most common in North America and South America from the Irvingtonian stage to the Rancholabrean stage of the Pleistocene epoch living 1.80 Ma – 10,000 years ago, existing for approximately 1.79 million years.
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