It is estimated that the first cases of dog domestication occurred about 15,000 years ago (on average), but their genetic divergence from wolves would be even older. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly the origin of dogs, and a recent discovery near Yakutsk in Siberia could help experts a lot. It is a perfectly preserved puppy, whose DNA does not quite fit in the classic profiles of dog or wolf…
The puppy of Yakutsk
The melting of permafrost is a very worrying sign regarding climate change and the rise of global temperatures, but beyond its severity, it also opens new possibilities for scientists. We refer to animals preserved to perfection, courtesy of the no-longer-so-perpetual cold. In the past we have talked about a mammoth, and about moss that spent 1,500 years frozen, but today we have something different: a puppy from Siberian ice.
The question is: puppy of what? There's the problem: experts are not sure. The state of preservation of the specimen is extraordinary, to the extent that it still has all its teeth intact. According to radiocarbon dating (done on one of its ribs), the animal died 18,000 years ago. Other details suggest it had not passed the age of two months at death.
A team of researchers from the Center for Paleogenetics (a project of Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History) managed to extract a DNA sample, and through analysis confirm that it is a male, now named "Dogor"... "friend" in Yakut. However, they could not determine whether it is a dog or a wolf.
David Stanton, one of the researchers on the team, admits that they already have an important amount of data, but still cannot establish which way the balance tips, something "relatively easy" in normal cases. That installs a remote possibility: that the puppy is actually an ancestor of both dogs and wolves.
On the other hand, it could represent a kind of intermediate point between both. Now, if it turns out to be a dog, it would be the oldest ever discovered. The current record belongs to the Bonn-Oberkassel dog, discovered in a basalt quarry in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, with 14,223 years.
Source: CNN
https://old.neoteo.com/la-cabeza-de-un-perro-del-neolitico-reconstruida-por-forenses/
