Dire Wolf

Dire wolves were 25% larger than gray wolves, with proportionally more powerful jaws adapted for taking megafauna—giant ground sloths, camels, and horses of Pleistocene North America. They were the dominant pack predator of their era, more common than any other large carnivore in the La Brea tar pits fossil record. Then they went extinct while gray wolves survived.

The dire wolf extinction reveals the danger of overspecialization in pack predator strategy. Dire wolves were optimized for a specific prey base; when megafauna disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene, dire wolves couldn't pivot to smaller prey. Gray wolves, smaller and more flexible, could hunt deer when mammoths vanished. The bigger, more powerful specialist lost to the smaller, more adaptable generalist.

The business parallel is dominant specialists overtaken when their target market disappears. Dire wolves are like Kodak, Blockbuster, or Nokia—dominant in their specific niche, with capabilities optimized for a world that was about to change. Gray wolves are like the digital natives who could pivot to whatever prey was available. Dire wolf strategy works until the megafauna disappear. Then the 25% size advantage becomes a 25% metabolic liability, and the specialist starves while the generalist adapts.