The prototypes of the Ghost-type "Game of Thrones" heroes were the real wolves that once roamed the American continent.
Everyone in Game of Thrones has their favorite characters to root for. There is no shortage of heroes and ambitious people in the film, and choosing a favorite is easy. But as the plot progressed, I watched with sorrow as my favorites were killed one by one. In Westeros, direwolves are real victims of injustice, facing the same extinction as in the real world.
George Martin's wolves are a very curious breed. They are huge beasts, and there are rumors that some of them reach the size of ponies. I must also say that the science fiction writer spied them in the Pleistocene period. Like mammoths covered with thick wool, direwolves are creatures that actually lived on Earth not so long ago (in biological classification, this species is called a dire wolf - approx. Transl.). And if Game of Thrones mostly neglects these poor animals, paleontologists have been able to learn quite a lot about the lives of collective ice age hunters who fled across North America.
If you could wander this continent during the ice age 10-125 thousand years ago, you would hear the howls of these wolves almost everywhere. Their bones are found from Canadian southern Alberta to Bolivia at altitudes from sea level up to 2,000 meters. Where the United States is today, the Pleistocene direwolves ran in packs from coast to coast. But finds in Southern California near the Rancho La Brea bituminous lakes, where hundreds and hundreds of remains have been found, will wipe out any collection.
If you collect these remains, you will get by no means such an impressive beast as the Ghost, Lady and other direwolves from the world of George Martin. The dire wolves (canis dirus) were larger and more powerful than the common gray wolves, which also lived in the Pleistocene. Their approximate weight was 60-70 kilograms, while the gray wolf weighs 40. This is a serious weight, but the dire wolf is far from the horse. In fact, it would be very difficult to distinguish a live dire wolf from a gray one if you did not look into their mouths. Among other differences, dire wolf has a very large first molar, the shape of which allows it to chew food better than its relatives.
However, despite anatomical features indicating that these predators were of different species, dire wolves most likely lived in the same way as their gray cousins, who still roam the vastness of North America. The huge amount of remains found in the bitumen lakes of Rancho La Brea suggests that dire wolves outnumbered all other large vertebrates. This only makes sense if dire wolves hunted in packs. Numerous evidence suggests that these carnivores did indeed chase medium-sized herbivores, such as horses. Wolves cannot grab prey like cats, and therefore rely on their stamina in running and jaw. Thus, dire wolves are almost always represented as roaming prehistoric expanses in packs. Furthermore,Some of the dire wolves at Rancho La Brea bear gruesome wounds and trauma that should have crippled them, but show signs of recovery. This indicates that the wolf packs had some kind of social support system that allowed them to survive.
But the teeth and jaws of dire wolves tell us not only about their hunting life. For example, male and female dire wolves of similar size have canine teeth, which suggests they were mating and there was no struggle between males for dominance in packs. Teeth also tell a lot about the difficult times dire wolves have had. About 15,000 years ago, the dire wolves of Rancho La Brea chewed bones much more often. The cracks in the teeth indicate that the wolves had to gnaw as much as possible on every carcass they got. The best times returned about 12 thousand years ago, although only 10 thousand years ago, the most recent predators of this species disappeared. It remains a mystery why today we cannot find packs of dire wolves roaming the vastness of the American continent.
“Direwolves south of the Wall haven’t been seen in two hundred years,” says Theon Greyjoy when Robb Stark discovers a litter of six puppies that have been helpless after their mother’s death. This is the very beginning of Game of Thrones. It seems that this series also exterminates wolves over and over again, repeating history with real prototypes of direwolves. But tradition has it that there are still wolves north of the Wall, and winter is approaching. I hope direwolves come with her.
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