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.
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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.
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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