section_path: Adaptation/Competitors
section_name: Competitors
paragraph_text: Competitors
  
  Just before the appearance of the dire wolf, North America was invaded by the Canis subgenus Xenocyon (ancestor of the Asian dhole and the African hunting dog) that was as large as the dire wolf and more hypercarnivorous. The fossil record shows them as rare, and it is assumed that they could not compete with the newly derived dire wolf. Stable isotope analysis provides evidence that the dire wolf, Smilodon, and the American lion competed for the same prey. Other large carnivores included the extinct North American giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), the modern cougar (Puma concolor), the Pleistocene coyote (Canis latrans), and the Pleistocene gray wolf that was more massive and robust than today. These predators may have competed with humans who hunted for similar prey.
  
  Specimens that have been identified by morphology as Beringian wolves (C. lupus) and radiocarbon dated 25,800–14,300 YBP have been found in the Natural Trap Cave at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, in the western United States. The location is directly south of what would at that time have been a division between the Laurentide Ice Sheet and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. A temporary channel between the glaciers may have existed that allowed these large, Alaskan direct competitors of the dire wolf, which were also adapted for preying on megafauna, to come south of the ice sheets. Dire wolf remains are absent north of the 42°N latitude in North America, therefore, this region would have been available for Beringian wolves to expand south along the glacier line. How widely they were then distributed is not known. These also became extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene, as did the dire wolf.
  
  After arriving in eastern Eurasia, the dire wolf would have likely faced competition from the area's most dominant, widespread predator, the eastern subspecies of cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta ultima). Competition with this species may have kept Eurasian dire wolf populations very low, leading to the paucity of dire wolf fossil remains in this otherwise well-studied fossil fauna.