Dire wolf

The dire wolf (Canis dirus, "fearsome dog") is an extinct carnivorous mammal of the genus Canis, roughly the size of the extant gray wolf, but with a heavier build. It evolved in the New World and was its most derived genus Canis species.Canis dirus is assigned to the Rancholabrean land mammal age of North America (240,000–10,000 years BP) and was among the many large carnivores and megaherbivores that became extinct in North and South America near the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Its ending is associated with the Quaternary extinction event.

Taxonomy

Canis dirus was named by Joseph Leidy in 1858. In 1984, Kurten recognized a geographic variation within the North American dire wolf populations and proposed two subspecies: Canis dirus guildayi for specimens from California and Mexico with shorter limbs and longer teeth, and Canis dirus dirus for specimens east of the North American Continental Divide with longer limbs and shorter teeth.

The first type specimen was originally found in the summer of 1854 at Evansville, Indiana when the Ohio River was quite low. The specimen, a fossilized jawbone, was obtained by Joseph Granville Norwood from an Evansville collector named Francis A. Linck. Leidy determined the specimen represented an extinct species of wolf and reported it under the name of Canis primaevus. Norwood's letters to Leidy are preserved along with the type specimen at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Canis primaevus (Leidy 1854) was later renamed Canis indianensis (Leidy 1869) when Leidy discovered that the name Canis primaevus had previously been used overseas.