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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 January 2025. Extinct species of canine mammal For the fictional creature in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, see Direwolf (Game of Thrones). For other uses, see Dire wolf (disambiguation). Dire wolf Temporal range: Late Pleistocene – early Holocene (125,000–9,500 years ago) Pre๊ ๊ O S D C P ...
Epicyon had a massive head and powerful jaws that were well adapted for bone-crushing, with enlarged fourth premolars like some hyenas, giving its skull a lion-like shape rather than having a skull similar in shape to that of a wolf; the adaptation would have allowed Epicyon to scavenge as well as hunt, giving it access to the nutritious marrow other contemporary carnivores couldn't access.
The Borophaginae descended from the subfamily Hesperocyoninae.The earliest and most primitive borophagine is the genus Archaeocyon, which is a small fox-sized animal mostly found in the fossil beds in western North America.
Borophagus, like other borophagines, are loosely known as "bone-crushing" or "hyena-like" dogs.Though not the most massive borophagine by size or weight, it had a more highly evolved capacity to crunch bone than earlier, larger genera such as Epicyon, which seems to be an evolutionary trend of the group (Turner, 2004).
The dire wolf shared its habitat with the gray wolf, but became extinct in a large-scale extinction event that occurred around 11,500 years ago. It may have been more of a scavenger than a hunter; its molars appear to be adapted for crushing bones and it may have gone extinct as a result of the extinction of the large herbivorous animals on ...
True members of Canis, namely the gray wolf and coyote, likely only arrived in the New World during the Late Pleistocene, where their dietary flexibility and/or ability to hybridize with other canids allowed them to survive the Quaternary extinction event, unlike the dire wolf. [14] Xenocyon (strange wolf) is an extinct subgenus of Canis. [15]
Prehistoric Predators is a 2007 National Geographic Channel program based on different predators that lived in the Cenozoic era, including Smilodon and C. megalodon.The series investigated how such beasts hunted and fought other creatures, and what drove them to extinction.
In comparison with the Beringian wolf, the more southerly occurring dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) was the same size but heavier and with a more robust skull and dentition. The unique adaptation of the skull and dentition of the Beringian wolf allowed it to produce relatively large bite forces, grapple with large struggling prey, and therefore made ...