Although most people may know terrible wolves for their many appearances in scene theft Game of Thrones, did not arise directly from the mind of George RR Martin. In fact, scientists have known about the creature that has been missing since the mid-19th century.
Until recently, it was widely believed that the terrible wolf (The dog darkens) was essentially a more muscular relative of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), partly because their skeletons look very similar. But a new study published in Nature suggests that the two species share much less than their appearances imply.
It all started when archaeologist Angela Perri of the University of Durham in the UK embarked on an expedition to North America to locate wolf fossils from museum collections and see if she could extract DNA from them. His effort was successful: As National Geographic Perri and his collaborators were reportedly able to sequence genomes of five wolf fossils from Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and Wyoming. The remains date from 50,000 years ago to about 13,000 years ago (around time the evil wolves became extinct).
After comparing the sequences of the bad wolves with those of the gray wolves and several other canids, the researchers found that the bad wolves and gray wolves genetically diverged from their common ancestor about 5.7 million years ago. How Scientific American explains, its morphological similarity seems to be an example of convergent evolution; in other words, they developed similar traits because their lifestyles were similar, not because their DNA was similar.
Based on these findings, it is possible that the nefarious wolves spent millions of years evolving in the Americas, far apart from the gray wolves of Eurasia. In this case, it could have been the possible migration of other species, even humans, that led the lousy wolves to extinction.
“The question now is: is its extinction related to climate and environmental change, or humans and potentially other wolves and dogs? [diseases] coming in to help them kick them out? “Perri said National Geographic.
The study could also affect the terrible scientific classification of the wolf. With a weaker genetic link to the Canis gender, perhaps it should move to its own gender. But even if that happens, there are many possibilities that we call them “terrible wolves” in an informal conversation, just as we do with koala bears, electric eels, and other animals with misleading nicknames.
[h/t Scientific American]