A Partial Dire Wolf Skull Is Headed to Auction This Month—and It Could Sell for $30,000
Collectors have a rare opportunity to bid on the remains of the fearsome creature, a large canid that went extinct around the end of the last ice age
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)
:focal(1453x1093:1454x1094)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/39/f3/39f3274b-babe-4088-9a72-1165ad5bf169/image_8-20-25_at_1122am_1.jpeg)
Dire wolves were fearsome predators that prowled around during the Late Pleistocene, between roughly 10,000 and 250,000 years ago. These carnivorous canids (Aenocyon dirus) were specialized hunters, using their large, sharp teeth to chow down on large animals like horses, camels, bison and ground sloths.
Dire wolves have been extinct since around the end of the last ice age. However, paleontologists continue to find their remains throughout North and South America.
Now, one of those specimens is headed to auction on August 29. Collectors have a rare opportunity to purchase the upper skull of a dire wolf during an upcoming Heritage Auctions sale—but it likely won’t be cheap. The fossil, which is being sold with a cast mandible to complete the skull, is expected to fetch at least $30,000.
Fun fact: What did dire wolves look like?
Dire wolves, popularized in media such as the Game of Thrones series, were larger than the modern gray wolf and had bigger teeth.
The auction house describes the fossil as being in “pristine” condition, however, it does show natural wear to the teeth, including one of the major canines. This suggests the creature was a mature adult when it died.
The cast lower jaw was painted to match the rest of the fossil, which is a dark brown color. It’s roughly a foot long and has been mounted in an open-mouthed position on a custom black metal stand.
“The skull is a sizable and, obviously, ominous example with a rich, dark coloration and serious visual character,” according to the listing. “This offering becomes a superlative display piece of intense dramatic appeal and scientific intrigue.”
The upper skull was discovered in the Nishnabotna River in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, near the far western edge of the state. It’s not clear when it was discovered, nor by whom, but the fossil is one of several dire wolf remains that have been unearthed in Iowa over the years.
In 1959, a partial skull was discovered in Crawford County, located in the west-central part of the state. That specimen is around 28,500 years old, making it the oldest dire wolf fossil found east of the Rocky Mountains, as Kate Kealey reported for the Des Moines Register earlier this year.
Another dire wolf fossil was unearthed in 2019 in Villisca, a small town in southwestern Iowa. Scientists dated it to around 14,000 years ago, which makes it the second youngest specimen found east of the Rocky Mountains, per the Des Moines Register.
The first dire wolf fossils were discovered in 1854 in Indiana, followed by several others in Nebraska. Four years later, American paleontologist Joseph Leidy named the species Canis dirus, which is Latin for “terrible wolf.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/06/0d/060d7293-9f36-4853-9981-beaaf9ff8df4/image_8-20-25_at_1122am_2.jpeg)
Numerous other dire wolf fossils have been unearthed across the country, including the bones of more than 3,600 individuals at the La Brea Tar Pits in California.
For years, paleontologists suspected dire wolves were related to gray wolves, because their skeletons show many similarities. However, genetic testing revealed in 2021 that dire wolves were not wolves at all. Instead, their DNA showed, they evolved from a separate, older lineage that split from the ancestors of today’s canids 5.7 million years ago. This means they are not part of the Canis genus after all and have been reclassified as Aenocyon dirus accordingly.
More recently, dire wolves have made headlines thanks to Colossal Biosciences, an American startup trying to resurrect these and other extinct creatures, such as the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. In April, the company announced that it had successfully “de-extincted” the dire wolf by genetically modifying gray wolf genes to produce three “dire wolf” pups. However, many external researchers took issue with the company’s claims, arguing that it had merely produced gray wolves that look like dire wolves.
In addition to the dire wolf fossil, the Heritage Auctions sale also includes several other “real-life ‘monsters,’” says Craig Kissick, the company’s vice president of nature and science, in a statement. Buyers can bid on the fossilized remains of a towering, eight-foot-tall cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), the skull of Late Cretaceous mosasaur (Tylosaurus proriger) and the tusk of a woolly mammoth.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/SarahKuta.png)