Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1912-12-10
FATE OF DIRE WOLVES
Prehistoric Animals Perish as They
Rush for Prey.


Rush for Prey.
Science has revealed in California a
stranger story than Kipling wrote in
his jungle Books" through the profess
sional knowledge of John c. Merriam,
professor of paleontology in the Uni
versity Of California. who has just
written the first authentic description
Of the appearance and habits Of the
great dire wolf, most ferocious and
powerful Of the canine species, says a
Berkeley dispatch to the San Francis
co Call.
Packs of these wolves, according to
Doctor Merriam, preyed on the giant
ground sloth and dismembered the
huge camels which in the pleistocene
age roamed not only California---but
the whole of western America from the
Mississippi valley to central Mexico
and from the Ohio river to the Pacific.
These wolves became extinct prob
ably in the pleistocene age, before man
had appeared on the planet. They
roamed in packs over the valleys and
plains, and at Rancho la Brea, the pre-
historic asphalt beds near Los Ange-
les, numbers Of the ferocious beasts of
prey were imbedded. These have been
exhumed in quantities in Doctor Mer-
riman's excavations, and the universi-
ty Of California scientist Is now able to
give to the world the first account Of
the brutes at all comprehensive.
How long the dire wolves have been
extinct Is given by DR.. Merriam in
geologic terms; they perished in the
stages of evolution countless thous-
ands of years ago and probably were
contemporaneous with the saber tooth
tiger, a mammoth beast Of which COM
plete skeletons have been found at
Rancho la Brea.
The first knowledge of the dire wolf
came to light in 1854, DR.. Joseph Leidy
describing the beast from jaw bone
and it's teeth, which were found near
Evansville, Ind. Forty years later F.
D. Cope found a few teeth Of the spe-
cies in Texas. In 1873 Dr. Leidy de-
scribed a second lower jaw, found in
the Livermore Valley, and in 1903 DR..
Merriam himself described a second
California specimen found in Tuclare
county.
Until Rancho la Brea yielded its
skeletal remains Of the dire wolf, how
ever, the beast was known only by
these fragments Now DR.. Merriam,
having hundreds Of broken skeletons
to work with, has been able to describe
the animal in its appearance, Its
haunts and habits; a powerful beast,
five feet in length, bigger than the
timber wolf or any that are found to-
day from Greenland to France.
Those beasts, Merriam writes, pur-
sued their prey across the southern
California plains. The fleeing sloth or
camel ran into the asphalt deposits,
and a soft place yielding. the beast was
imprisoned. The wolves plunged af-
ter, and the whole fierce pack went to
death in the ooze. 1t Is these beasts,
by their skeletons, that Merriam is
now studying.
The dire wolf became extinct, and so
did other prehistoric wolves Of Califor-
MIA, their last relatives being the ordi-
nary gray wolf Of the north the fox
and the skulking coyote. Taken with
the many other remains Of prehistoric
animals from Rancho la Brea, the dire
wolves supply material unsurpassed
elsewhere in the world for study Of the
evolution of organly life. OF this long
the feral combats Merriam
speaks of were but pleistocene Incl
dents.
Besides his extensive study Of the
dire wolf Merriam describes four other
species of allied extinct animals which
ogists One is the Orcutt wolf, a.
smaller beast than the dire wolf, but
more intelligent. Its skeleton remains
are scarce at the rancho, probably be-
cause of the animals instinct for dan
ger being sharper.
Another species Is the larger Miller
wolf, a short-faced coyote and a tim
ber wolf.
An interesting note to science is the
discovery also by Director Merriam of
remains from the pleistocene age of
the gray fox, a wolfish animal which Is
still extant. This proves the gray fox
one Of the animals of most venerable
antiquity, unchanged during the ages
that produced man in the world.
81' Misery loves company and gener-