Mammoths everywhere, rejoice. Those packs of ancient gray wolves that roamed Alaska, crunching up your bones died out thousands of years ago. Now you can repopulate the frozen North.
Oh, wait, you died out too? Never mind. This post will have to be for curious humans then.
Researchers have uncovered a species of highly carnivorous wolf that used to live in Alaska, north of the ice sheets. Now extinct, these wolves preyed upon the giant creatures that lived 12,000 years ago (mammoths, bison, musk ox and caribou), all the while avoiding their mega-competition: lions, short-faced bears and saber-tooth cats.
New research published in the journal Current Biology describes these Alaskan Pleistocene wolves. They had broader skulls with a mouthful of massive teeth, allowing them to generate a powerful bite.
They also had more broken teeth than modern wolves, leading to the conclusion that they made short work of their prey's big bones.
Here's what one of the researchers, lead author Jennifer Leonard, had to say:
Since their genetic material was discovered intact, researchers were able to trace the DNA family lineage back, discovering when they separated from the gray wolves we know today. The fossils showed that the Pleistocene wolves had no overlap with modern wolves - a surprising result.
As the extinct mammoths will attest, all the mega-mammals died out at the end of the Pleistocene era. Whether it was global climate change, human hunting, or some combination of factors that killed off the big creatures, it was irrelevant to these wolves.
When their prey died off, they died too.
