The Return of Dire Wolves?

[Ninurta]

our ecosystem has adjusted to being post-megafauna.

the introduction of smilodon or cave bear could disrupt.  is there enough food for them?  might they force out existing animals?

I would love to see them bring back the Carolina Parakeet.  they have specimins in the Smithsonian and I'm sure they could find suitable hosts.  I understand they have sequenced the genome (whatever that means)

as I recall Dire Wolves are a lot bigger than today's wolves?

Dire wolves were about 6 or 7 feet long and 3 1/2 feet tall at the shoulders, and weighed an average of 150 pounds. So they were maybe a foot or a foot and a half longer, and about a foot taller, than the average modern gray wolf, but still within range of gray wolves. I think it is the Mackenzie Valley Wolf that is the largest breed of timber wolf still in existence, and  dire wolves were about equal, but did not exceed on average, the Mackenzie Valley wolves in size.

Logan's father was a Mackenzie Valley wolf,which explains why he weighed 160 pounds, and explains why Logan was as big as he was, and weighed 140 pounds. Not a "Dire Wolf", just a really large breed of modern timber wolf.

The company has plans to resurrect the woolly mammoth as well, in order to reconstruct mammoth tundra in northern tundra regions, but that is not going to help the so-called "dire wolves" already in existence, and would be unlikely to help dire wolves in general, even if they managed to actually resurrect them. Mammoths are big critters, unlikely to have been a primary prey for dire wolves. I would guess that steppe bison of the "long horn bison" (Bison antiquus) were more likely the primary prey species for dire wolves, and no one seems to be planning to resurrect them, so any modern dire wolves would have to find a new prey species that is already in existence. that, too, is unlikely to happen - there is a reason dire wolves went extinct to begin with, and the consensus is that since they disappeared along with the megafauna, they were likely unable to adjust to other prey species, unlike the timber wolves, which did adjust.

Dire wolves also preyed upon other extinct animals, such as American camels, extinct American horses, giant ground sloths, and various antelopes that are no longer with us, etc. The closest current US cognates would be domestic horses, domestic cattle, domestic sheep, and plains bison I can only imagine the havoc a modern dire wolf population would wreak on those species, which would inevitably lead to bounties and re-extinction of dire wolves even if they were recreated.

The modern world is no longer the world dire wolves lived in. They would find themselves strangers in a strange land, with every man's hand set against them. Not a pretty picture.

Likewise any attempt to recreate smilodons or other saber toothed and scimitar toothed cats. Their prey no longer exists. Cave bears might be a different story. They have modern cognates in Kodiak bears, which seem to be doing ok. But since we already have Kodiak bears filling that office, why would we even need to resurrect cave bears?

American lions (panthera atrox) of the Pleistocene were about 25% larger than current African lions, and were the largest breed of lion to ever exist. Can you imagine the depredations on livestock and people that a resurrection of American lions would cause?

Ressurrection of extinct species might be fun for scientists trying to play at being gods, but it would not be so fun for the species involved, nor for the current species -incuding humans - that would have to contend with them.

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