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Of Lycanthropy and Dire Wolves (Canis dirus)
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October 19, 2011
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Man is a beast. I think the ancient superstitious legend of the werewolf originates from a fear of ourselves or at least a fear of feral individuals within our society.
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People with various mental illnesses don’t follow the rules of civilization and behave as if they were wild animals.
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Both the Greeks and the Romans believed in the existence of men who could temporarily transform themselves into wolves.
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The legend of lycanthropy may predate written language.
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Diseases such as rabies and and the disorder of hypertrichosis compounded the confusion because symptoms of these conditions partly mimic the legend.
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The Age of Reason ended the widespread belief in the existence of werewolves, but the legend lives on as a popular monster of horror fiction.
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When paleo-indians encountered dire wolves they were forced to deal with a real monster.
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Unlike timber wolves (Canis lupus) which originally evolved in Eurasia, dire wolves evolved in America where the large pack-hunting canids never learned to respect or fear man.
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Studies of the fossil record suggest dire wolves appeared suddenly about 200,000 years BP.
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They replaced Armbruster’s wolf which had been the dominant canid in America for over a million years.
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It’s unclear whether dire wolves evolved from Armbruster’s wolf or another canid (C. nehringi), a little known extinct canid that inhabited South America.
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Dire wolves ranged from coast to coast and from what’s now southern Canada to Peru.
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They’re very common in the fossil record, suggesting they were the most abundant large predator on the continent.
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In the northern parts of their range they co-existed with timber wolves.
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In the southeast they co-existed with red wolves (C. rufus) and coyotes (C. latrans).
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I didn’t include an illustration of a dire wolf because at first glance, they would’ve probably looked just like a modern day timber wolf. There were some subtle anatomical differences.
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Dire wolves had a broader head, larger teeth, stronger jaws, and shorter but stouter legs. On average they were significantly larger than timber wolves.
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The average weight of an adult timber wolf is ~80 pounds. The average weight of an adult western dire wolf was ~120 pounds; the average of an adult eastern dire wolf was ~140 pounds.
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Scientists noted a difference in size between eastern and western dire wolf fossils.
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Eastern dire wolves also had longer legs than their western cousins.
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Thousands of dire wolf skulls have been recovered from the La Brea tarpits in California.
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Coincidentally, one of the few dire wolf skulls found in South Carolina was larger than all but one of the California skulls.
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Though timber wolves average 80 pounds, some individuals do reach 160 pounds. That suggests a really large dire wolf would’ve approached 200 pounds.
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White tail deer are not large enough to sustain a pack of wolves consisting of individuals of this size.
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Dire wolves required abundant bison, horses, llamas, and juvenile mammoths and mastodons.
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Interestingly, the appearance of dire wolves coincides with the evolution of the larger Smildon fatalis from the smaller Smilodon gracilis, indicating an arms race of sorts between the two.
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