The extinct old wolf may have been one of the only wolves – so genetically different from the wolf’s closest relative that it could no longer cross, forcing it into an evolutionary deadlock when it disappeared. 13,000 years ago.
This is the conclusion based on a new study, an in-depth analysis of DNA taken from terrible old wolf bones throughout North America. Once terrible wolves (The dog is fading) moved away from the gray wolves millions of years ago, it seems they haven’t mixed since.
In fact, their genetic offspring are so different from other canids that the research team proposes that terrible wolves be completely placed in another genus – to be reclassified as Aenocyon dirus, as first proposed in 1918.
“Howling wolves are sometimes described as mythical creatures – giant wolves roaming gloomy frozen landscapes – but the reality turns out to be even more interesting,” said paleobiologist Kieren Mitchell of the University of Adelaide in Australia.
“Despite the anatomical similarities between gray wolves and terrible wolves – suggesting that they may be related in the same way as modern humans and Neanderthals – our genetic results show that these two wolf species closely resemble distant cousins, such as humans and chimpanzees. ”
The remains of muddy wolves can be found in fossil records from 250,000 to about 13,000 years ago and appear to have dominated the carnivore scene in the last ice age of what is now North America.
Only in the famous La Brea tar pits do great excavated wolf individuals outnumber the slightly smaller gray wolf.Canis lupus) more than a hundred times.
But the way they diverged, evolved, and eventually became extinct toward the end of the last ice age, about 11,700 years ago, was a challenge to be a part of. So an international team of scientists has started working on one of the only clues we have: bones.
“Smoky wolves have always been an iconic representation of the last ice age in America, but what we know about their evolutionary history has been limited to what we can see from the size and shape of their bones,” said archaeologist Angela Perri of Durham University.
But sometimes paleontological remains can contain other information inside: DNA preserved well enough to be sequenced. And that investigated the team.
They obtained five terrible wolf DNA samples from 50,000 years ago to 12,900 years ago, from Idaho, Ohio, Wyoming and Tennessee, and sequenced them.
Then they compared them to the genomic data from eight living canids today, obtained from a genomic database: gray wolf, coyote (Canis latrans), African wolf (Canis lupaster), dhole (Cuon alpinus), Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), Andean fox (Lycalopex culpaeus) and the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus).
They also generated new genome sequences for the gray wolf, the black-backed jackal (Canis mesomele) and the striped jackal (Canis).
They found that, unlike other wolves that migrated between regions, the terrible wolf remained standing, never moving away from North America.
And, fascinatingly, even though they have shared space with coyotes and gray wolves for at least 10,000 years, they never seem to have crossed paths with them to produce hybrids.
“When we started this study, we thought that distressed wolves were just gray wolves, so we were surprised to find out how different they were genetically, so much so that they probably couldn’t have crossed,” said the molecular geneticist. Laurent Frantz from Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany and Queen Mary University in the United Kingdom.
“This must mean that terrible wolves have been isolated in North America for a very long time to become so genetically different.”
In fact, according to the team’s analysis, terrible wolves and gray wolves must have diverged from a common ancestor more than 5 million years ago. When you consider that dogs and wolves diverged between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, it is indeed a very long time.
Crossbreeding between canid species whose territories overlap is quite common. The hybrid between coyote and wolf is so common that it has a name – coiat – and wolf-dog hybrids are not unknown (although their growth as pets is extremely controversial in the US). So the terrible wolves spent so much time near the canines without crosses is extremely unusual.
And, although the team did not explore this possibility, genetic isolation could have contributed to the eventual extinction of the ancient beast, as it could not adapt to a changing world with new features.
“While ancient humans and Neanderthals appear to have crossed, like gray wolves and modern coyotes, our genetic data have provided no evidence that terrible wolves interbreed with any living canine species,” Mitchell said. “All our data indicate that the terrible wolf is the last surviving member of an ancient offspring distinct from all living canines.”
The research was published in The nature.