We see a fauna that is very similar to what we would see even in California.'īut this area would also have seen a unique mixing of southern and Arctic species. 'We're starting to get a better picture of what lived in Canada in ages past. What the discovery meansĬonfirming the presence of dire wolves adds to our picture of what the Ice Age looked like in Canada, Reynolds said. Reynolds's previous research found sabretooth cats in the same deposit as the dire wolf. There were giant ground sloths, wild horses, camels, mammoths and mastodons.

'Brown blob' found in Yukon is a well-preserved Ice Age squirrelīut every now and then the ice retreated, opening up habitat from Yukon down through central and southeast Alberta and making way for an Ice Age bestiary that's hard to imagine on the rolling, grassy plains along the South Saskatchewan River, where the dire wolf was found.

Game of Thrones casts Alberta wolf as Jon Snow's canine companion.'Based on the parts of the shape we do have, which does it look more like,' Reynolds said.

They compared that with known values from grey and dire wolves. The team took points along the outline of the fossil and used a computer program to estimate its shape. 'When an animal gets really old, it starts to wear down its teeth, and this can mean that features of the teeth get worn away,' Reynolds said.Īlthough dire wolves tend to be significantly bigger than grey wolves, this individual was within the size range of both species.

There are ways to tell them apart based on teeth, but this animal was too old for that. So, it was either a grey wolf or a dire wolf. (Ashley Reynolds/Royal Ontario Museum/Journal of Quaternary Science) The entire specimen, which is between 25,000 and 50,000 years old, consists of one jaw, badly crushed, with some remaining teeth. Photos show the fossil of the dire wolf jaw from the outside, the top and the inside.

Game of thrones direwolves in real life