Extinct Canines Thread

Discuss other canids (coyotes, foxes, dholes, etc.).

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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by Blightwolf » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:04 pm

Who would have thought that bears and canines are related. It doesn't seem likely, but it is the truth. And when you look at bears (at least this happens when I look at them) you can see some slightly canid-like features in them.
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by Crocotto » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:46 pm

Blightwolf wrote:Who would have thought that bears and canines are related. It doesn't seem likely, but it is the truth. And when you look at bears (at least this happens when I look at them) you can see some slightly canid-like features in them.
The key features I notice are
-The way the shoulder is built
-The build of the skull
-Proportions of the jaw
-How the eyes are set
-build of the rib-cage
-and the overall body proportions excluding the legs
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by Blightwolf » Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:35 am

Yes, the body proportions resemble each other in a certain way. Bears are much thickset and stubbier than canines, though, but there definitely are some common physical characteristics.
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by sparkledcupcakes » Wed May 05, 2010 4:43 pm

Now that I think about it the dire wolf reminds me of a fox, coyote aznd wolf mixed together lol.
How did they go extinct? I should read up on it.
It seems like they would be good hunting wild animals.
Maybe its just that they hunted live stock?
Maybe people killed them off.
Because I dont really know.
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by Crocotto » Fri May 07, 2010 3:03 pm

sparkledcupcakes wrote:Now that I think about it the dire wolf reminds me of a fox, coyote and wolf mixed together lol.
How did they go extinct? I should read up on it.
It seems like they would be good hunting wild animals.
Maybe its just that they hunted live stock?
Maybe people killed them off.
Because I don't really know.

The Dire Wolf, Canis Dirus; went extinct about 11,00 years ago in Central and South America. A majority of the North American Population went extinct 9,500 years ago, with small relic populations surviving in isolated mountain ranges for another 1,200 years.
The main theory is that because they had such a stocky build, they couldn't run as fast as their distant relatives the Gray Wolf. This meant when the large, slower moving prey items such as the North American Ground Sloths and Horse died out, they were left with much less food. And when your a large, active, pack hunting carnivore, you need large amounts of food.
And one must remember, even in the Dire's golden age they we're by no means the dominant predator. Living in the same time and place you had giant North American Lions, Carnivorous Bears nearly the size of Rhinos, and Flightless Predatory birds over 9 feet tall.

The demise of the Ice-Age mega fauna is one of the great mysteries of paleontology. However there is several things we know for sure. The dire died out long before their was live-stock and ranching, let alone guns. Their downfall was that they where too specialized, and unlike their close relatives the Coyotes, they couldn't afford to have a large range of diet. They where good pack-hunting animals, but unfortunately that's the only thing they where good at. The same thing almost happened to the Gray Wolf. In some areas the Gray went extinct, it was because their prey had either left or was gone, not because man hunted the wolves themselves.

Oh, and just to tell yah, we really don't know what a Dire Wolf would look like. Since it was thought for a long time the Dire was a close relative of the Gray wolf, many old paintings incorrectly portray them as just bigger, stockier, Gray Wolves. We now know that the Dire was in fact and close relative of the Coyote, which was sort of its "little brother species". The two shared a common ancestor in South America, and probably looked a lot alike. So if you want to imagine what a Dire looked like, think of a huge, and very stocky Coyote.
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by Blightwolf » Fri Jul 23, 2010 8:10 am

Artistic renditions of the Dire Wolf's appearance has been made using digital technology... here's one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canis ... larosa.jpg

The first (left) rendition is based on the North American origin and the second (right) is based off the South American origin.

The North American "version" of the Dire Wolf greatly resembles the modern Northwestern Gray Wolf (Canis lupus occidentalis). And the South American rendition makes me think of a pig-like browsing animal, a tapir: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~pex/wordpr ... /tapir.jpg
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by LunaLynn » Fri Jul 23, 2010 8:21 pm

I was reading a book once and I saw a pic of an extinct dog. I think it was some sort of Great Dane because it looked like one, but it was HUGE. :shock: :mrgreen:
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by ethiopianwolfking » Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:21 am

my 2 favourite extinct canines are Xenocyon lycaonoides, the ancestral wild dog, and Vulpes riffautae, the chad fox
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Re: Extinct Canines Thread

Post by caninesrock » Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:56 pm

Supposedly,this is supposed to be the most accurate portrayal of Dire Wolves
http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m168 ... rewolf.jpg
http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/direwolf.html

I find the coloring they chose boring though. I hate how all recreations of them draw them as having the exact same coloring of gray wolves. They were two different species. Even species today if they look simliar aren't exactly the same color. For example, coyotes and black-backed jackals. Yes, they look kind of simliar and live in simliar habitats,but there are some things in their coloring that are different because they are 2 differenet species. Btw, its only the anatomy that's considered accurate in that picture, not the coloring or fur type/length as nobody knows any of that because all we have are bones from the dire wolf and while you can tell surpisingly alot from bones, like what the animals ate, if they were hunters or scavengers if they ate meat, what species they were most closely related to, where they lived based on where the bones were found,etc., unfortunately you can't tell what color they were or want kind/type or length of fur they had.

Interestingly, while it gets the most attention, the Dire Wolf wasn't the only type of prehistoric wolf. There were a few others as well, that also interestingly, all lived in North America.

These included:
1.Armbruster's Wolf (Canis armbrusterii)-Very simliar to the Dire Wolf,but with a narrower head and was a little larger. They came before the Dire Wolves,but some may have still lived at the time of the Dire Wolves. Dire Wolves may have evolved from them.
2.Edwards Wolf (Canis edwardii)- A small somewhat coyote-like wolf that may have been related to the red wolf,eastern wolf, and coyote, and may be the ancestor from which the 3 species branched off of depending on if the eastern wolf or red wolf are their own species or not.
3.Hare-eating "wolf" or Johnston's Coyote ( Canis lephophagus): A small coyote-like "wolf" that lived around the same time as the Armbrusters Wolf, Edwards Wolf, and Dire Wolf.
4. Alaska Mystery Wolf-a recently discovered subspecies of gray wolf that lived in Alaska in prehistoric times and went extinct about 12,000 years ago. This subspecies would have lived along side the Dire Wolf,but the other wolves above would have been long extinct before the mystery wolf made it's appearance.

Actually,the gray wolf is relatively new in North America. I did a bit of research on extinct wolf species as well as existant wolf species in North America in prehistoric times and figured out what animals would have lived around the same time by picking different times and this is what I got:

1.8 mya(million years ago)
1.Armbrusters Wolf
2.Edwards Wolf
3. Hare-eating Wolf
4.Dire Wolf
5. Red Wolf,
would have all lived together.
__________________________
300,000 years ago:
1.Armbrusters Wolf
2.Edwards Wolf
3.Dire Wolf
4.Red Wolf
5. Eastern Wolf,
would have all lived together. The Hare-eating wolf would have been long extinct by this time and while the Eastern Wolf hadn't evolved yet 1 million years ago, it would have been there 300,000 years ago because it evolved 750,000 years ago.
_______________________________________________________________________________
12,000 years ago:
1.Dire Wolf
2.Alaska Mystery Wolf
3. Gray Wolf (all other subspecies besides the extinct Alaska mystery wolf subspecies)
4.Red Wolf
5.Eastern Wolf

By this time, all of the other subspecies of prehistoric wolf, besides the Dire Wolf and Alaska mystery wolf subspecies of gray wolf, had gone extinct. The gray wolf arrived in North America much earlier, about 100,000 years ago,however, but even by that time, the only prehistoric wolf there to greet it was the Dire Wolf because the last of the Hare-eating Wolves went extinct 1.8 million years ago and the Armbruster's Wolf and Edwards Wolves had gone extinct 300,000 years ago. The Alaska Mystery Wolf subspecies of gray wolf, on the other hand, wouldn't have been there because they only appeared briefly 12,000 years ago and were short lived. The Arctic (gray) Wolf may have already been in the high arctic parts of North America as much as 500,000 years ago,however. The subspecies that migrated into North America was probably the Eurasian tundra wolf or a prehistoric subspecies simliar to the Eurasian tundra wolf.

Sources:
http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/direwolf.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_wolf (Look under the Fossil and Historical Record part.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_wolf (Look under Taxonomy part.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf (Look under Colonization of North America part)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis_edwardii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_Wolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armbruster%27s_Wolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare-eating_Wolf
http://www.sitnews.us/0807news/081607/0 ... ience.html
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AlaskaScienceF ... ive-alaska
http://uafcornerstone.net/mystery-wolf- ... in-alaska/
http://www.valdezstar.net/story/2012/10 ... a/201.html
http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/08/ ... ry-wolves/

Plus:
Prehistoric Predators-"Dire Wolves" episode
Prehistoric Predators-"Terror Bird" episode
Monsters Ressurrected-"Terror Bird" episode
Dogs:Their Fossils Relatives and Evollutionary History book

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