Heftier than modern-day gray wolves and capable of cracking the bones of their prey, dire wolves were among the Pleistocene’s most-feared hunters. It’s long been believed that these top predators lived only in the Americas, but researchers have now unearthed the first fossil evidence that dire wolves also inhabited Asia, which they reported this month in Quaternary International. In 2017, a sand-mining operation on the Songhua River in northeastern China dredged up an unusual fossil. But the fossil was distinctly different from the gray wolf jawbones that had been previously unearthed from the river’s depths. The closest match, they found, was the extinct Canis dirus, the dire wolf.

Source: International New York Times October 15, 2020 14:37 UTC