Canis Dirus No More?
Film Review | Literature Review | Training
9 February 2021
To categorize
means to name in public:
κατηγορία
as many a phenomenologist
points out, at the outset of the seminar.
To categorize
is to clarify, often.
But not invariably.
- Anne Carson, Canicula di Anna
The genome of extinct fauna sometimes confirms previously hypothesized evolutionary relationships. And sometimes it turns them on their heads. In a recent article in Science we learn that paleontologists have recovered about a quarter of the dire wolf genome. Comparing it to the animals they thought were close modern relatives, coyotes and grey wolves, it seems they drie wolf has evolved separately for 6 million years. This meant that, when coyotes and and grey wolves were introduced into North America during the last glacial maximum when a land bridge existed across what is now the Bering Straight, those species were unable to interbreed with the larger dire wolf and ended up replacing him in that ecological niche.
all my pics from the tar pits
Although the dire wolf is probably most famous from the Game of Thrones TV series, it's also known as the most prolific skeleton found at one of the Cenozoic's most famous sites: the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California where oil that is under much of LA seeps out of the surface and once captured animals to their deaths. Because predators would gather around prey trapped in the tar and then get stuck themselves there are a lot more of them. This is the opposite of the distribution in Nature, where prey are of course more prevalent. I was able to visit the Tar Pits with my coworker Ridley before a company meeting in 2019, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
