Dire wolves were first discovered in the 1850s, and many samples have been preserved in nearly perfect condition thanks to places like the La Brea tar pits in what is now Los Angeles, which are natural pits of asphalt that sucked up the bodies of prehistoric beasts like mammoths, sloths, and American lions while they still walked the earth. The morphology of the canine was so similar to a mega-size gray wolf that nobody thought to argue with what seemed like a sure thing.