The dire wolf
A heavier, stronger-jawed canid spreads across the Americas — and is not closely related to wolves at all.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 121 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Aenocyon dirus is built more powerfully than a grey wolf with a bite adapted to bone, and it becomes one of the most common predators in Pleistocene North America; thousands have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits. Ancient DNA published in 2021 showed it belongs to a lineage that separated from wolves and coyotes around six million years ago and never interbred with them — its resemblance to a wolf is convergence, and it was moved to its own genus.