🔍 Locate & Collect 100 Dire Wolf skulls hidden around the map to unlock the Mangey Dire Wolf for 2000 tracks, along with a new color gradient for Billboard names!

Without finding the wolf skulls, this skin is available for 5000 tracks.

youtu.be/96cF5hy-hx0

Lastly, but certainly not least, nights are about to get a bit darker, and opponents more abundant…

“Pseudo-Melanistic” Saber-tooth Cat, a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 tracks

Next, keep your eyes peeled! A familiar spotty equid is inbound.

“Bay Leopard” Western Horse, a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 tracks

Join us in celebrating Ecos with tomorrow’s Summer Nights event!

We are hosting a discussion panel to talk about the game.

For more information, check out the Page Museum website: tarpits.org/calendar/sum...

colossal.com/direwolf/
www.newscientist.com/article/2477...
tarpits.org/stories/dire...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1694312...
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/139018
eurekamag.com/research/005... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Image Credits:
La Brea Tar Pits (3,6)
Paiaoe (8)
Citations:
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

While initially considered a sister species to grey wolves, the dire wolf instead portrays a rich, complex story of canid evolution that we have only just begun to unravel. To learn more about dire wolves and their ecosystems, be sure to check out ecoslabrea.wixsite.com/ecos--la-brea

The preprint also suggests the Aenocyon lineage evolved via admixture between basal Caninae & South American canids, followed by later admixture with the LCA of Canis & dholes. Despite earlier hybridization, both paleogenetic studies imply no gene flow between A. dirus and Canis.

Sensationalism aside, Colossal's supporting preprint, Gedman et al. 2025, provides genuine insight into the genetic prehistory of Aenocyon. Referencing nuclear & mitochondrial paleogenomes produced a potentially constrained divergence time for the Aenocyon lineage at ~4.5 Ma.

Further discourse arose recently with Colossal Biosciences' "Dire Wolf De-Extinction Project", advertising the alleged resurrection of Aenocyon via gene-editing grey wolves to mirror fossilized genomes. This has been met with criticism by institutions such as the IUCN and LANHM.

However, the study Perri et al. (2021) overturned the consensus on dire wolf heredity. Using genomic DNA, they proposed dire wolves diverged from other canines in the Late Miocene (~5-7 Ma). Accordingly, the authors redescribed the animal under its previous title: Aenocyon dirus.

In the 1980s, paleontologist Björn Kurtén proposed two North American subspecies: C. d. dirus and C.d. guildayi based on skeletal differences. Following literature from 1988 to 2010 also suggests the existence of a South American subspecies known as "Canis (dirus) nehringi".

The dire wolf was first described in the 1850s under Canis primaevus. By the early 1900s, John C. Merriam advocated for the genus Aenocyon (Greek ainos, 'terrible' and cyon, 'dog'), which was later rejected in favor of Canis dirus, a sister species to the extant grey wolf.