Animals don’t just appear on the massively popular fantasy show Game of Thrones—they announce themselves, hitting the screen as larger-than-life, CGI-generated (or CGI-enhanced) fantastical beasts like dragons and dire wolves.

Dragons are, of course, the stuff of lore. But dire wolves—oversized, extra-powerful wolves—are real. Or at least they were once. About 300,000 years ago, they roamed the Americas. Their fossils are scattered across North and South America, from the mountains of Virginia to the Las Vegas strip, through Mexico and as far south as Bolivia.

Known scientifically as Canis dirus, dire wolves were actually not that much larger than modern gray wolves, but they boasted a larger skull and jaws, and a stronger bite. They likely feasted on large