The Dire Wolf has appeared in many role-playing games, and maybe you’ve read (or seen) them most recently on Game of Thrones. In real life, dire wolves existed alongside early man and the mega-fauna in the Pleistocene Age. They were larger than the average wolf, stronger, and had sharper teeth.

But when the mega-fauna began to go extinct, dire wolves lost their primary food source. They were too slow to hunt the smaller prey that modern grey wolves feasted upon, which forced them to become scavengers—something they weren’t really built for. Eventually they died out.