In this illustration, a pack of horrible wolves feeds on a bison, while a pair of gray wolves approach in hopes of feeding.
Mauricio Antón
Game of Thrones author George RR Martin did not invent terrible wolves, the animals given to the children of the Stark family (even Jon Snow) as pets in the book and TV series. They are a real, but now extinct, canine species that lived from 125,000 years ago to about 9,500 years ago. A new study reveals more about why the creatures are no longer around: Terrible wolves couldn’t make terrible little wolf litters with today’s gray wolves, even if they wanted to.
“Despite the anatomical similarities between gray wolves and terrible wolves – suggesting that they may be related in the same way as modern humans and Neanderthals – our genetic results show that these two wolf species are much more similar to distant cousins, as humans and chimpanzees, “said Kieren Mitchell of the University of Adelaide, co-author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Gray wolves can mate with other similar animals, including African wolves, dogs, coyotes and jackals, but the terrible wolves were too genetically different to mate with other groups. According to the study, terrible wolves separated from these wolf strains almost 6 million years ago and were only a distant relative to wolves today.
In an HBO Game of Thrones scene, Tormund Giantsbane and Jon Snow’s terrible wolf, Ghost, watch Jon leave.
Helen Sloan / HBO
“Although ancient humans and Neanderthals appear to have interbred, as well as modern gray wolves and modern coyotes, our genetic data has provided no evidence that terrible wolves interbred with any living canine species,” said Mitchell. “All of our data points to the terrible wolf being the last surviving member of an ancient lineage distinct from all living canines.”
The research was conducted by Durham University in the United Kingdom, with the help of scientists from the University of Oxford, Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany, the University of Adelaide and UCLA. The team sequenced the ancient DNA of five terrible wolf sub-fossils from Wyoming, Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee, dating back more than 50,000 years ago.
The study was the first time that ancient DNA was taken from terrible wolves and suggested that the species evolved only in North America for millions of years, not migrating as other species do between North America and Eurasia. Since wolves could not breed with other species, the researchers postulated that some of the genetic characteristics that kept these species alive were not delivered to ancient canines.
More than 4,000 terrible wolves have been excavated at La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, the study notes, but scientists don’t know much about the reasons why they disappeared. Gray wolves, also found in the pits, still exist today.