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The Prehistoric Canidae Thread- Wolves, bonecrushing dogs etc

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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Who knows what else they gave us.

    According to Danny Vendramini, nightmares :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,551 ✭✭✭Rubecula


    Ziphius wrote: »
    Interesting. Do you remember the magazine you read this in? My understanding was that domestic dogs are descended from (and strictly speaking are) modern grey wolves (Canis lupus).


    Not 100% sure but I think it was FOCUS June 2012


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,027 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Adam Khor wrote: »
    According to Danny Vendramini, nightmares :D
    Do NOT get me started on that yahoo AK. :D

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    There's good evidence already that the woolly rhino and polar bear appeared there too.

    http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-fossil-fox-out-of-tibet-hypothesis-02004.html

    latest?cb=20170109073453


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    The borophagines or bone-crushing dogs were canids that filled a similar niche to that of hyenas during the Oligocene, Miocene and early Pliocene of North America; the subfamily includes both some of the smallest known canids (such as the huge-eared Otarocyon, the size of a chihuahua) and the very largest, including Epicyon which at 170 kilograms was within the size range of modern lions (and far larger than the largest canid today, the wolf, which averages about 45 kilograms).

    This study provides new evidence that borophagines used their potent jaws to crush bone which was then consumed as with modern hyenas.

    https://elifesciences.org/articles/34773

    epicyon1.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    The once sacred cenote sinkholes of Yucatan have yielded several interesting fossil finds including that of one of the oldest human skeletons from the Americas:

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-of-mexican-skeleton-connects-siberian-ancestors-to-native-americans/

    and the unexpected remains of short-faced bears, at first misidentified as jaguars:

    https://paleorama.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/video-inah-halla-restos-de-osos-de-hace-12-mil-anos-en-cenote-proximos-a-craneos-humanos/

    Now, a new study (https://paleorama.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/video-inah-halla-restos-de-osos-de-hace-12-mil-anos-en-cenote-proximos-a-craneos-humanos/) confirms that fossil remains previously misidentified as coyotes are actually from the extinct canid Protocyon, sometimes known as a "cave dog", which until now had only been found in South America:

    latest?cb=20170506134117&path-prefix=es

    Protocyon was a moderately sized but extremely robust canid with powerful, bone crushing jaws. Studies of the South American fossils suggest they were feeding on the same prey as the giant sabertooth Smilodon populator, either hunting in packs or scavenging the cat's kills, and very likely both.

    The Yucatan fossils prove that Protocyon reached much further into the north than previously thought.

    The study also identifies remains previously labeled as Tremarctos (spectacled bear) as Arctotherium wingei, a species of short-faced bear also previously known from South America only.

    250px-Arctotherium.jpg

    Unlike the gigantic Arctotherium angustidens from South America which is probably the largest bear known from decent fossil remains, A. wingei was far smaller, at 100-250 kg, being comparable in size to today's e spectacled bear.

    Also mentioned is the supposed new species of cat "Panthera balamoides", recently described based on a single arm bone. However, the study suggests the bone may instead belong to Arctotherium.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,531 ✭✭✭Seanachai


    Galvasean wrote: »
    Stolen from the NatGeo comments:

    They'd be a rock star at the palaeontology after party if they busted out that one on the podium lol


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Study shows dogs have facial muscles that wolves lack, evolved very quickly during the last 30.000 years.

    https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/11/1820653116

    F1.medium.gif


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    RNA recovered and sequenced from prehistoric wolf

    https://newatlas.com/pleistocene-wolf-rna-sequenced/60831/
    RNA degrades much more quickly (than DNA) and was thought impossible to recover in older samples. But now researchers have done exactly that, isolating and sequencing the RNA of a 14,000-year-old wolf found frozen in the Siberian permafrost.

    2BE01DBD00000578-0-image-a-17_1441113190588-600x382.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    https://www.9news.com.au/world/prehistoric-wolf-discovery-why-did-ancient-creature-lose-its-head/c2c98f65-7621-433e-981b-a9b89aea7736
    While there is no evidence of early humans being in the icy region of Siberia 40,000 years ago, scientists can’t rule the ancient hunter theory out.

    “Our suggestion is that the head was separated by ice,” said Dr Albert Protopopov, of the Academy of Sciences of Sakha Republic in Siberia.
    “We have seen many cuts with ice, like the heads of horses and other animals, so we had no hesitation.”

    “There are characteristic traces on the soft tissues, presumably left while the tissue was fresh or even alive,” Dr Protopopov said.
    “The effect is like an axe or sharp big knife.”
    But he declared further investigation was needed, and he could not rule out the severing was ‘artificial’.
    “We do not exclude that it could have been cut artificially,” Dr Protopopov said.
    “To exclude this a meticulous study is needed.”

    The DNA extracted from the specimen is currently under study in Stockholm.

    1-n153444-1.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,551 ✭✭✭Rubecula




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Rubecula wrote: »

    I suppose for most people nowadays, the first thing that comes to mind when they hear "dire wolf" is the scaled up wolves from Game of Thrones. :(

    Canis dirus was really impressive but it wouldn´t have looked like a big gray wolf. It had a much bigger head proportionally, with heavier jaws and bigger teeth, almost like a hyena. It was also a much more robust animal. There aren´t many depictions I think that do it justice.

    Just look at how massive the skull is compared to that of the gray wolf (or a human).

    64219032_1456930837765484_7554711001078169600_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_oc=AQldkk4uiVletJCLCs_dp6jzP9Gotfyu3mGrbli51h3vxxL5e87zuBoN6r23jqHVnjPUibaajeorbjbd-GnbYS9G&_nc_ht=scontent.fgdl5-1.fna&oh=731072b5af7d766d0196870e71ec9f4c&oe=5DE31358

    One of the things I always wonder about C. dirus is what it would've sounded like. All members of genus Canis howl, but they all sound different, and of course, the bigger they are, the deeper the howl, with the gray wolf having the deepest voice nowadays. Being larger on average and more robust, it is tempting to imagine C. dirus as having the deepest and most impressive howl.

    Of course there's always the possibility, however small, that they did not howl at all!


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    From Siberian permafrost, here's a 18.000 year old canid pup, amazingly well preserved! Currently being tested to see whether it's a wolf or a dog, or something else...

    XDLM5VO.jpg

    hAkB1s4.jpg

    palaeogenetics.com


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Interesting video interview with Dr. Angela Perri, who will soon release the first DNA study on Canis dirus, the American dire wolf- except that the study apparently finds it too distinct, genetically, to genus Canis, and instead part of an extinct linneage native to the Americas.

    This means it may be sunk back into genus Aenocyon, and it must have looked very different from the scaled-up gray wolf illustrations we're used to seeing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=uSW_dyUnrlM&feature=emb_logo&fbclid=IwAR3JAccY42DEdeLHFF1lUxl-83rvOdvi3R5nW4mvnjntHQ4rceyk-LaT6ow

    We will have to wait for the paper to know what its closest relations may have been; however, it seems it diverged from the Canis linneage about five million years ago; a completely different beast, overall.


    Canis_dirus_Sternberg_Museum.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    New study looks at the differences between the hyoid of the Rancho La Brea fossil canids- the coyote (Canis latrans), wolf (Canis lupus) and dire wolf (Canis? dirus). The hyoid of dire wolves appears to have been almost 50% larger than in Canis lupus, strongly suggesting the former had a much deeper call (howl?), although it may also have enhanced the animal's breathing and feeding ability.

    The study also finds that the La Brea coyotes had a different hyoid from extant ones, meaning they must have sounded different from their living relatives (La Brea coyotes are also known to have been larger on average).

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jmor.21130

    Canis_dirus.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Ferrucyon, a Pliocene fox from Mexico. Formerly known as Cerdocyon avius (that is, a member of the same genus as today's South American crab-eating fox), it had never been formally described, however, and a new study finds it to be unrelated to Cerdocyon and actually a true fox from the Vulpini tribe.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343794524_The_Pliocene_canid_Cerdocyon_avius_was_not_the_type_of_fox_that_we_thought/link/5f3fe1c392851cd302110501/download

    The animal is described as medium-sized for a canid.


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Canis borjgali, a new species of Pleistocene wolf-like canid described from Dmanisi. The study suggests an alternate view of the modern wolf's immediate ancestry. Also, augmented reality is involved somehow.

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00131/full

    feart-08-00131-g001.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Healed injuries on a Canis chhliensis, a large prehistoric wolf, suggest it was cared for by a pack 1.3 million years ago:

    https://phys.org/news/2020-09-wolves-million-years.html

    H-Diagram-of-a-Canis-skeleton-the-shaded-parts-represent-the-Canis-chihliensis-bones.png


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Very interesting new study on what appears to be the first ever dire wolf fossil found outside of the Americas! The fossilized jaw was found in North-eastern China, at a site known for its hyenas, cave lions and tigers.

    The find is significant because until now, dire wolves (Canis dirus) were believed to belong exclusively to temperate to warm climates, as no remains had been confirmed from the northern US, Canada or Alaska, where they were believed to have been replaced by the megafaunal gray wolf.

    However, the new find suggests dire wolves at some point did cross into Asia, and that there was a population of them as far as north-east China. The new study suggests the dire wolf never became abundant in Asia due to competition with the already established hyena (Crocuta ultima), which occupied the same ecological niche. Eventually the hyena would have outcompeted the dire wolf into extinction. Instead, in North America where hyenas were absent, the dire wolf became the most abundant large carnivore over much of the continent.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618220306194

    This also reopens the possibility that the frozen wolf's head found in Siberia last year could belong to a dire wolf, rather than a gray wolf. The idea of it being dire wolf was considered unlikely due to the lack of fossil evidence of this species' presence outside the Americas. DNA test results are sure to shed light on its true identity.

    016-siberian-wolf-head-2.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,973 ✭✭✭Chris_Heilong


    Just as a response to the first post.
    A dog skull and a wolf skull are almost identical except for changes humans have introduced through selective breeding, there is no magic mystery as some are trying to find, Dogs are domesticated wolves, end of. Same reason they produce fertile young when mated.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    47586227_397578350981050_7445875130799592177_n-2757558333.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 20,633 ✭✭✭✭Buford T. Justice XIX


    Origins and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs

    Dogs were the first domestic animal, but little is known about their population history and to what extent it was linked to humans. We sequenced 27 ancient dog genomes and found that all dogs share a common ancestry distinct from present-day wolves, with limited gene flow from wolves since domestication but substantial dog-to-wolf gene flow.

    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/557


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Dire wolf confirmed by DNA study as belonging to a different linneage from modern wolves- a very ancient one at that, having diverged from the ancestors of Canis over 5 million years ago.

    The ancestors of the dire wolf would have evolved in the Americas, unlike the true wolves which evolved in the Old World and later crossed over. This makes the dire wolf the last known member of this ancient New World canid linneage, and justifies its re-classification as Aenocyon dirus, rather than Canis dirus.

    What this means for the animal's appearance is uncertain, but it likely did not look like a scaled up grey wolf as usually depicted.

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/legendary-dire-wolf-may-not-have-been-wolf-all#:~:text=One%20of%20North%20America%27s%20most,as%20mysteriously%20as%20it%20disappeared.

    Dire_wolves_1280x720.jpg?itok=7sk_qOfy


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