Dire Wolves

The extinct dire wolf is very like the gray wolf or timber wolves living in North America today. It was only slightly larger than the largest timber wolves and lived on a similar diet. Dire wolves died out with much of the rest of the North American mega fauna between 10,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Coyotes, gray wolves and timber wolves shared the same habitat as the Dire wolf and still exist in the wild today. Why did they survive and the Dire Wolf didn't?

The dire wolf (Canis dirus) had a slightly different physiology from the still living modern wolf species that shared its world. Dire wolves had much more massive teeth and a larger head than the other wolf species. It also had a more massive body and shorter legs than modern wolves.

These differences may indicate that the dire wolf preyed upon different types of game animals than their longer legged cousins and went extinct when their prey animals died out. The dire wolves may not have been able to compete with other, perhaps faster carnivores for prey animals such as deer and antelope. They coexisted with gray wolves (Canis lupus) in North America for 100,000 years and were completely extinct by 12,000 years ago.

Dire Wolf Facts:

• average weight 35-70 kilos- (75-150 pounds)
• average height 80 centimeters (about 3 feet)
• average length 125 centimeters (about 4.5 feet)
• hunted large hoofed animals including bison
• best preserved fossil remains found in Florida and California

Over 4,000 fossil specimens of dire wolf have been recovered from the La Brea Tar pits in California along with the fossilized remains of smilodon (saber toothed cats), American lions and other canid predators. The large numbers of fossil wolf remains reinforce the supposition that the dire wolf was a social animal and a pack hunter.

While the exact cause of the dire wolf dying out is unknown, it is known that the gray wolf was both faster and more intelligent than it's older dire wolf cousins. When the large hoofed grazers became less numerous the dire wolf may have had difficulty finding adequate food sources. This likely led to a decrease in the size of the population until there no longer were enough to perpetuate the species.