Yet, even the largest dire wolf would pale in comparison to Epicyon haydeni. This colossal canine, whose very name translates to “more than a dog”, truly lived up to its epic monker, ...

Based on the sequence of two new dire wolf genomes, the researchers at Colossal conclude that dire wolves formed a distinct branch within the canids over 2.5 million years ago.

For context, the gray wolf—the closest living relative of the dire wolf—has a genome of about 2.45 billion base pairs (the fundamental building blocks of DNA).