Dire wolves were not wolves, new genetic clues reveal | Hacker News Reader

Dire wolves were not wolves, new genetic clues reveal

scientificamerican.com

79 pointspseudolus30 comments

It says that Dire Wolves are an offshoot of "dogs"... I thought dogs evolved from wolves in close contact with humans for long periods of time, circa 15-30k years ago. If that's true, how would these early dogs made it to North America? What am I missing?

That's the popular understanding, but genetic studies caused science to move away from that explanation some time ago. Dogs seem to have evolved from a common ancestor with wolves quite a ways back and show a good deal of genetic divergence. Though they are still included in the "Canus" genus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Origin

More detail:

> Genetic studies show that dogs and modern wolves display reciprocal monophyly (separate groups), which implies that dogs are not genetically close to any living wolf population and that the wild ancestor of the dog is extinct.[4][2] An extinct Late Pleistocene wolf may have been the ancestor of the dog,[3][1] with the dog's similarity to the extant grey wolf being the result of genetic admixture between the two.[1] In 2020, a literature review of canid domestication stated that modern dogs were not descended from the same Canis lineage as modern wolves, and proposes that dogs may be descended from a Pleistocene wolf closer in size to a village dog.[5]

> The genetic divergence between dogs and wolves occurred between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago, just before or during the Last Glacial Maximum[6][1] (20,000–27,000 years ago). This timespan represents the upper time-limit for the commencement of domestication because it is the time of divergence but not the time of domestication, which occurred later.[6][7] One of the most important transitions in human history was the domestication of animals, which began with the long-term association between wolves and hunter–gatherers more than 15,000 years ago.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog

They may be using the term "dog" to refer to Caninae (or Canidae?) rather than wolf-derived pets, judging by the description of the phylogeny.

Exactly. Later in the article it's mentioned that the researchers believe the DNA evidence will move the dire wolf out of the 'canis' genus, which by implication will leave them in the 'canidae' family. However I think the author could have been more clear.

Yeah, I didn't realize that "dog" was equivalent to "canidae".

They're not referring to domestic dogs. Dogs must mean something else in that field. They state that dire wolves split from the common ancestor with wolves about 6M years ago and didn't interbreed. That makes them about as related to wolves as we are with chimps.

Dogs in this sense refers to any member of the Canis genus. Historically speaking, before taxonomic and genomic advances, coyotes, wolves, jackals, and, well, dogs, were all called dogs.

Similar usage inconsistencies persist throughout the world.

> It says that Dire Wolves are an offshoot of "dogs"

And then it says that their genetic analysis might indicate that they're not even part of the canis genus. Which means they would not be considered dogs at all- so how could they have descended from "dogs"?

Seems just sloppy terminology to me.

North America bad bridge to Asia long ago

But probably not in the 15-30kya range, right?

Apparently yes, for most of that time period.

"A reconstruction of the sea-level history of the region indicated that a seaway existed from c. 135,000 – c. 70,000 BP, a land bridge from c. 70,000 – c. 60,000 BP, intermittent connection from c. 60,000 – c. 30,000 BP, a land bridge from c. 30,000 – c. 11,000 BP, followed by a Holocene sea-level rise that reopened the strait.[22][23] Post-glacial rebound has continued to raise some sections of coast."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia#Geography

Link to the paper in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x

>It had long been assumed that dire wolves made themselves at home in North America before gray wolves followed them across the Bering Land Bridge from Eurasia

This sentence caught my mind because it really represented how much randomness and accident you can abstract away with your choice of words

That sentence reads like a standardized English test question. Follow up questions from the passage: "Why did dire wolves choose North America as their home?", "True or False: Gray wolves choose to follow the dire wolves in search of open lands."

Reminds me of SAT prep so many years ago.

Answer key: "To get away from the crowd of gray wolves", "True"

Young me: Are you kidding me?

Shows what I know. I only ever heard the expression "dire wolf" in a Grateful Dead song.

You should read more G.R.R. Martin! :)

Don't murder me, I beg of you don't murder me.

The art at the top of the article looks suspiciously like it depicts dholes.

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/dhole

Wolf or not wolf, winter is coming.

It's January 14. Winter can't get any more here (I got the game of thrones reference.)

I was about to make a reference to "six hundred pounds of sin" until I realized we'd be making two different popular cultural references.

Doesn't load at all in firefox. I guess they only tested in chrome.

I'm sorry, I can't replicate. Firefox works fine, here.

I think they fixed something. less than 5 minutes ago it didn't load for me, and suddenly it did.

here too

not sure what setup you use, but for me (win 10 64b, latest firefox, running ublock origin and ghostery) works fine

Side note: You probably want to switch to Privacy Badger. Less shakey than Ghostery with privacy and doesn't replace ads with its own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism

I use Firefox’s content filter and it always to filter out the actual content of the page. Oddly enough, refreshing made it load just fine.

Didn't load for me first time in Firefox. I refreshed and it worked.

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