Do you know, the gray wolves that roamed the earth about 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age at Alaska could amazingly not just prey animals much larger than themselves, but also devour them completely, including their bones? No, it’s no fantasy or another kids’ fiction.
This is a discovery by a new study. It reveals the ancient wolves with short snouts, strong jaws, and massive canine teeth, not prevalent among today’s wolves – this credits them with big bite forces-specialization.
Astonishingly, it is found that the animals ate a varied diet of mammoth, musk ox, bison, and horse! Thanks to the chemical signatures in the wolf bones, which suggested their diets.
The skull and tooth bones collected decades ago from the permafrost have been used for analyzing their activities and this surprising characteristics.
Died at the end of the Pleistocene epoch along with mastodons, saber-toothed cats and other big animals, the bones are stored today at museums in the U.S. and Canada.
Thus, it seems that the Alaskan ancient wolves didn’t have to compete with larger relatives – the dire wolves, allowing them to spread their populations farther south.
But, will this find in late Pleistocene mammals can provide clue to the current climate change’s affect on species diversity? Perhaps, yes. But, a single find is too less an evidence to conceptualize a worldly phenomenon change.
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