Dire wolves weren't closely related to today's wolves
The species, made famous by the show Game of Thrones, were different from other canine species such as coyotes and grey wolves—so much so that they were not able to breed with each other, according to the new research in The findings disprove earlier research that suggested Dire wolves were related to grey wolves. For the study, researchers sequenced the DNA of five Dire wolf fossil remains from Wyoming, Idaho, Ohio, and Tennessee dating back more than 50,000 years. Their results show that Dire wolves and grey wolves were in fact very distant relatives. “The findings show that Dire wolv...