Not long ago I was working with a group of children outdoors. As usual, stories of wilderness adventures began to fly around the circle. I listened to tales of raccoons ravaging trash cans, bobcats stalking birds and coyotes howling in their dreams.

I always appreciate children’s stories. Through their eyes I see the landscape and the animals that I was not present for. More often than not my curiosity is piqued by their stories, and through that I learn.

This instance was no different. I intently listened to one boy’s tale, not so much because of the information but because of his absolute insistence that it was true.

Several years ago the boy, his brother and his mother were driving on Saddle Peak Road. A deer bounded across the road as if being chased.

They stopped to watch, and several moments later a pack of “wolves” followed the deer. The deer and the wolves disappeared into the scrub, and the story ended. I asked if he was sure they were wolves.

“Yes, definitely! Much too large to be coyotes,” he responded.

I trusted they were not coyotes as I knew he had seen many coyotes and knew their size. But then I asked about feral dogs, or wolf hybrids. Again I was met with a definitive response; they were wolves and nothing else.

I gently explained that there were no wolves in California and that most wolves in the United States were exterminated by the early 1900s. What I said did not matter; he had seen a pack of wolves.

I dropped the conversation, but my mind clung to his insistence. Could there have been wolves in the remotest regions of the Santa Monica Mountains?

The fossil record

While I knew presently no gray wolves (Canis lupus ) lived here, I wondered about the past. So I searched the historical records and maps and fossil remains and found no gray wolves documented in the Santa Monica Mountains.

This seemed like a great void, but then I remembered the La Brea Tar Pits. One wall of this museum exhibited hundreds of dire wolf (Canis dirus ) skulls and hosted several full skeletons.

I returned to my range maps and fossil records and sure enough, dire wolves ranged all over these mountains and presumably even over Saddle Peak Road.

Unfortunately, though, I do not believe this is what my young friend saw. Dire wolves became extinct approximately 10,000 years ago after having evolved along with coyotes (Canis latrans ) in North America about 1.8 million years ago.

They are not directly related to gray wolves, which evolved in Eurasia, nor are they a direct ancestor of any known species today. Being most abundant during the Pleistocene Epoch, dire wolves are considered part of the North American megafauna— large mammals which are now extinct.

As part of the Canis genus, which includes jackals, coyotes and wolves, dire wolves shared similar characteristics and behaviors, but they were markedly different from their modern wolf counterparts.

Built to feed

Larger than gray wolves, they reached an average length of 5 feet and weighed between 130 and 175 pounds. This makes them the largest known canid to exist. Interestingly, their legs were proportionally shorter and stouter than those of gray wolves, indicating perhaps that they were not as swift as wolves today.

Their heads were broader and larger, although their brain cases were smaller than gray wolves. Along with bigger heads, their jaw bones were more massive, and the shape of their skulls implies large temporal muscles, pointing toward greater force for mastication.

Their teeth were also larger than gray wolves’, and their upper carnassials were bladelike for slicing meat off bone. This suggests that 50 percent to 70 percent of their diet was meat, and their bulky teeth may have been used for bone crushing.

As no written or oral records exist describing this animal when it was alive, it is difficult to determine its behavior, but theories exist.

One suggests that because of their massive jaws and teeth, their behavior may have been similar to that of hyenas.

Still others believe that these animals hunted in packs, killing prey with a series of shallow fatal bites like modern canids today. Yet another theory believes that, because of their shorter legs and smaller brain case, these animals were scavengers.

Most likely their strategies incorporated all of these theories.

Regardless, their hunting tactics did not save them from extinction after the last glacial period. During this time many of the large herbivores vanished, possibly due to climate change or human hunting pressure.

With this loss of prey, the dire wolves became the fossils of Los Angeles County.

While I cannot concede that my young friend saw a pack of wolves roaming Saddle Peak, I certainly can concede to his imagination and be thankful that he still envisions vestiges of dire wolves running over our mountains.

Meghan Walla-Murphy can be reached at the following e-mail: mwallamurphy@yahoo.com.