What is a Dire Wolf? A Beginner's Guide
- Imagining History
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Do you mean the character Dire from Fortnite? Nope, I mean a Dire Wolf - the biggest wolf that has ever existed. Dire Wolves were a close relative of the Gray Wolf - the species that all modern dogs have descended from. Besides, I'm more of a Minecraft person.
Oh, like those gigantic white wolves from Game of Thrones? Those are the ones! G.R Martin, the author of Game of Thrones based these fantasy versions on the real-life historical Dire Wolves that preyed the landscape of North America, during the Stone Age, thousands and thousands of year ago.
How big was the real Dire Wolf then? Big. The biggest dog alive today is the American Mastiff, and the Dire Wolf was much bigger. They were five feet long and weighed more than Chris Hemsworth (the dude who plays Thor in Marvel's Avengers).
Did they have puny jaws like the Smilodon? Looked great but didn’t do much? Nope, they had razor sharp teeth that could crunch through bone to suck the marrow out. Their favourite prey was wild horses, as they had plenty of marrow in their large bones for a Dire Wolf to enjoy. You would not want to meet a Dire Wolf in a dark alley. Or a light alley. Or any alley for that matter.
Did they just eat meat? Dire Wolves were 'hypercarnivores', which is another long and complicated word to describe how they ate mostly meat but could also chow down on veg too.
Did people in the Stone Age try to hunt Dire Wolves? Pretty unlikely, I mean, could you imagine taking on a pack of Dire Wolves armed only with an axe, club, or spear thrower? Nope, us neither!
Are they extinct? Maybe not anymore! Dire Wolves originally died out around 11,000 years ago. We know so much about them as over a thousand Dire Wolf - and Smilodon - fossils were found in the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles in America.
However, as of yesterday (Tuesday the 8th of April 2025) an American company announced the news that they have successfully cloned three Dire Wolf pups - named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi - each with the distinctive white fur and large skulls of their ancient ancestors. They are absolutely adorable (though who knows what they’ll look like when they are all grow up!)
