Dire.. beasts?

[Link]

Since it is some sort of a DnD question, I figured this might be the right place for this topic. I just wanted to know what the deal was with the dire beasts that walk on the lands of the Forgotten Realms (i.e. dire cats, dire elks, dire tigers etc.) Why are they called like that? What are they really?

[Seraph]

I just wanted to know what the deal was with the dire beasts that walk on the lands of the Forgotten Realms

They once walked on Earth you know.

From Bjorn Kurten and Elaine Anderson's Pleistocene Mammals of North America:

"Dire Wolf, Canis dirus... One of the most common mammalian species in the Rancholabrean, the dire wolf has been found at more than 80 sites in North America ranging from late Illinoian and Sangamonian to late Wisconsinan. ...The range covers most of the United States and Mexico and extends to Peru in the south.

"Equalling a large gray wolf in size, Canis dirus was markedly heavier of build, with a very large and broad head and sturdy limbs with relatively short lower segments. The dentition was more powerful than that of any other species of Canis, the carnassial teeth being, on the average, much larger than those of Canis lupus. The braincase is relatively smaller than that of the grey wolf. The dire wolf may be referred to the subgenus Aenocyon, of which it is the sole known species." -- p. 171

[Xero279]

Seraph did a excellent job lol but to summarize:

...a stronger form of the animal

[Butterfingers]

The Dire Beasts here on Earth were part of the Mega Fauna. There were Dire Sloths (Almost 40 feet long) Dire Cats (Sabertooths) all sorts of beasts.

Very few dire beasts (Mega Fuana) survived the last ice age. Mammoths, giant sloths, wolves, cats, most of them died. The Bison survived, as did a few rare species of wolves. The true Dire Wolf no longer exists, only pseudo dires. The true Dire Wolf stood nearly 7 foot tall at the shoulder and weighed almost 800 to 900 pounds. They were the super preditor during the glacial age. Think of wolves the size of horses that frequently hunted mammoths and musk oxen.

[Xero279]

well YA if you wanna get technical about it

[SixOfSpades]

7 feet tall at the shoulder??? Forget wolves the size of horses, that's more like wolves the size of polar bears. It's true that the Mesozoic is more my area of expertise than the Cenozoic, but I've never heard of any canine reaching THAT size. Dayum.

There has been some speculation that Dire Wolves in the BG world might be Undead, but I've never heard any conclusive arguments.

[Butterfingers]

Well, like the cave dwelling giant sloth, only one skeleton of a dire wolf has been found. They lived for the most part on the land bridge between Russia and Alaska. One partial skeleton was found on an island off of Alaska, I think it was back in 93 or 94. It was nearly seven foot at the shoulder. It had fangs that are estimated to be 5 to 6 inches long. It was only a partial skeleton sadly, most of the mega fauna skeletons are very hard to get from this part of the world, as they now lie on the ocean floor.

What I would love to see is the bear that they found. Only a partial skeleton, but, this particular bear would have been over 20 feet tall standing on his hind legs. In the flesh, he would have been horrifying!

[Butterfingers]

Well, like the cave dwelling giant sloth, only one skeleton of a dire wolf has been found. They lived for the most part on the land bridge between Russia and Alaska. One partial skeleton was found on an island off of Alaska, I think it was back in 93 or 94. It was nearly seven foot at the shoulder. It had fangs that are estimated to be 5 to 6 inches long. It was only a partial skeleton sadly, most of the mega fauna skeletons are very hard to get from this part of the world, as they now lie on the ocean floor.

What I would love to see is the bear that they found. Only a partial skeleton, but, this particular bear would have been over 20 feet tall standing on his hind legs. In the flesh, he would have been horrifying!

Edit. Suffered momentary brain fart.

The land mass was called Beringea. It was home to some of the largest mega fauna you could imagine. There are a few fossil records, many of them only being discovered recently. For some reason, even among the mega fauna, everything was HUGE here. Wolves, mammoths, types of oxen like creatures, bears, etc, and, a few of these prized fossils have been found in both Russia and Alaska. Most of the real prizes probably lay sunk in the ocean.

I am no expert in this field. It is merely a hobby of mine.

[ 02-11-2003, 05:37 PM: Message edited by: Butterfingers ]

[SixOfSpades]

For some reason, even among the mega fauna, everything was HUGE here.[/QB]

Mass homeothermy. Bigger beast = lower surface area to body-mass ratio = easier to stay warm. Most commonly seen in warm-blooded creatures. Larger size also means much greater resistance to predators, and the ability to prey upon larger food sources (which adds the benefit of having to hunt less often--one kill can feed the family for a week).

That doesn't explain the strange concentration that you describe in Beringea, though. Perhaps food and other resources were extremely plentiful, sparking an "arms race" of ever-bigger beasties. The opposite certainly occurs when resources are scarce--Shetland ponies, to take a modern-day example.

[Olorin]

I attended a talk at my university a couple months ago about the fauna on some of the Caribean Islands during the last Ice Age.

Since the ocean levels were lower then, many of the islands were larger than today, and many were connected to each other, forming some decent sized land areas. On one of these islands, there was a rodent species that grew to a maximum size of 600-800 kg! The reason for this was the limited access to the island. There were no larger class mammals that made it to the island, so these rodents became the dominant land animal. There is evidence that their size varied along with the sea level (since the sea level controlled how much land was available), but they were doomed when the Ice Age ended and the island was partly drowned, and split into three segments. Even the largest segment only had enough resources to support 20-30 of the oversized rodents, and a gene pool that small would not have enough diversity for them to adapt back to a smaller size before they became extinct.