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Dire wolf is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on July 17, 2017.

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January 12, 2017	Good article nominee	Listed
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direwolf

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that this article remains about the Dire wolf (Canis dirus) and should not be confused with the direwolf (note the one-word name) that relates to the series of novels forming A Song of Ice and Fire and the television series Game of Thrones. Editors wanting to contribute to the direwolf topic are referred to those articles. Any edits to this Dire wolf page regarding the direwolf will be removed. Please vote either YES or NO. William Harris • talk • 10:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

YES I wholeheartedly agree with this.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
YES I agree, though I'm pretty sure direwolf will be redirected to some GOT related list, and not remain a separate article for long. FunkMonk (talk) 02:05, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
YES Strebe (talk) 18:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus WP:CONS is full support for this proposal. It is now implemented. William Harris • talk • 04:31, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal - change of genus: Canis →Aenocyon

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that the genus of the direwolf be changed in this article from Canis to Aenocyon based on the findings of a major genetic study, which suggests that they are a separate lineage to genus Canis and proposes the older (1918) genus name of Aenocyon. Study found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x (with publicly available news report found at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dire-wolves-were-not-really-wolves-new-genetic-clues-reveal/) William Harris (talk) 11:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support - it seems well-supported, and even in the unlikely event it gets overturned, it doesn't affect the article's title, so is easy to change. FunkMonk (talk) 11:12, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - ditto Mariomassone (talk) 12:13, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:26, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom, though we can’t assume that consensus among experts has, or will, happen. I merely believe such consensus will be forthcoming and therefore support verbiage explaining that the results are too new to be considered ‘fact’. Strebe (talk) 23:55, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The consensus WP:CONS is full support for this proposal. William Harris (talk) 06:49, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Canis vs Aenocyon (Dog vs Terrible Dog)

I will be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about how the whole taxonomic system works, but I do know that if you want to change peoples' minds, you need to put it in their faces, ie. newspaper ads, magazine covers, billboards, and more recently, Google searches. I saw it discussed here, after or when it had been done, that the infobox had been changed to Aenocyon. Now, do a Google search of Canis dirus dirus and look at the results, in particular the sidebar or, if you will, the infobox. Wikipedia may not consider itself a reliable source, but a good portion of the rest of the world does. By allowing the change to stand, even though the experts still haven't reached a consensus, means we have now violated WP:CRYSTAL. One of you Guardians of the Sciences should address this: I'm not that bold, and I'm likely to screw it up. — Myk Streja ^(beep) 15:49, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's not really controversial, it's fairly standard to follow such revisions here. In case a future DNA study finds fault with the last one, we'll just change the article accordingly, wouldn't be the first time. FunkMonk (talk) 16:21, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@FunkMonk: Well, I'm writing for an online story site (nope, not sharing that), and as part of my research I'm investigating the dire wolf (sabertooth, too). That's why I got to here and saw the discussions. The article confused me and now I see why. That said, another site I went to, the San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library, doesn't even mention Aenocyon, and it was last updated March 2021. See where I'm going? Should we be embracing this change so quickly? Everywhere else is either strictly Canis or they're hedging and saying Canis/Aenocyon. And there's my two pence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myk Streja (talk • contribs)

Why would the San Diego Wildlife Alliance Library be a relevant authority for animals that became extinct ten thousand years ago? While for living (and to a lesser extent, recently extinct) animals Wikipedia defers to external authorities for classification, for extinct animals the taxonomy is essentially based on whatever happens to be the prevailing name used. Genetic results are typically more reliable than morphological results because they are not subject to homoplasy. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:31, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm not sure the website of a zoo would even be up to date with the latest palaeontological research anyway, so not particularly relevant. And if you look at the page's citations, the newest is from 2010, so it's not like they've taken a stand on this issue at all, it just relies on decade old sources. FunkMonk (talk) 01:36, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The key point is that the genus Aenocyon has been proposed (reinstated?) by 50 evolutionary biologists, and nobody has rebutted it. Therefore, it is not contentious and to claim that "the experts still haven't reached a consensus" is rebutted on the facts. William Harris (talk) 08:00, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Previous Discussions of Calibrated Radiocarbon Dating

@Strebe I should’ve mentioned this in the edit comments, but the changes I made were ones that @FunkMonk, @Hemiauchenia, and I agreed to in the Columbian mammoth talk page. The radiocarbon dates in the 20th and early 21st century dates are uncalibrated, an issue that is addressed by the more accurate calibrated radiocarbon dates as for instance discussed in the edit history for Megalonyx. PrimalMustelid (talk) 13:28, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimalMustelid: Sounds good. Your edits left in place citations that contradict the edits, so we would need to find suitable replacements. Besides the dates, there is count of extinct megafauna genera, for example. Obviously Stuart is reliable, but if there is controversy remaining among experts, we should be careful about relying on a single reference. Strebe (talk) 17:10, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Canis

It would appear that some paleobiologists are not buying the paleogeneticists re-classification to genus Aenocyon, based on the latest paper here.
We need to keep in mind that Perri et al 2021 did not reveal which of the two mutation rates often used by wolf geneticists was used to give a date of genetic divergence of 5.7 million years ago. The dating may be out by a factor of x2, with the possibility that the age is actually 2.8 million years - which puts the dire wolf straight back into genus Canis once again. Time will tell. 14.2.192.61 (talk) 08:06, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They don't even attempt to refute that study nor do they comment on its results, so saying they aren't "buying into it" is an overstatement. FunkMonk (talk) 09:49, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This particular group of researchers classified dirus as genus Canis and not Aenocyon is all that I am highlighting. 14.2.192.61 (talk) 10:24, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]