Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog

[WhistlingJack]

Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog

By Bruce Bower, Science News

July 23, 2010 | 1:30 pm

Every dog has its day, but that day took more than 14,000 years to dawn for one canine. A jaw fragment found in a Swiss cave comes from the earliest known dog, according to scientists who analysed and radiocarbon-dated the fossil.

Dog origins remain poorly understood, however, and some researchers say that dog fossils much older than the Swiss find have already been excavated.

An upper-right jaw unearthed in 1873 in Kesslerloch Cave, located near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, shows that domestic dogs lived there between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago, say archaeology graduate student Hannes Napierala and archaeozoologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann, study co-authors at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

“The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe,” Napierala says.

Researchers have also found roughly 14,000-year-old dog fossils among the remains of prehistoric people buried at Germany’s Bonn-Oberkassel site.

Older fossil skulls recently identified by other teams as dogs were probably Ice Age wolves, Napierala and Uerpmann argue in a paper published online July 19 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. That includes a 31,700-year-old specimen discovered more than a century ago in Belgium’s Goyet Cave and reported in 2009 to be the oldest known dog.

Palaeontologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who directed the analysis of the Goyet fossil, stands by his conclusions. “The Kesslerloch dog is not the oldest evidence of dog domestication,” he says.

Numerous wolf fossils lie near alleged dog remains at Kesslerloch Cave and Goyet Cave, raising doubts about whether either site hosted completely domesticated animals, remarks archaeologist Susan Crockford of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She regards the Swiss jaw as an “incipient dog” in the early stages of domestication from wolves.

Scientists disagree about how and when dogs originated, other than that wolves provided the wild stock from which dogs were bred. One investigation of genetic diversity in modern dogs and wolves concluded that domestication occurred in south-eastern Asia, whereas another placed canine origins in Eastern Europe or the Middle East (SN: 4/10/10, p. 12).

Napierala and Uerpmann suspect that, however the DNA studies pan out, they will show where wolves originated, not dogs. In their view, dogs were domesticated from local wolf populations in various parts of Europe, Asia and perhaps northern Africa sometime before 15,000 years ago.

The Kesslerloch dog jaw and its remaining teeth are considerably smaller than those of wolves recovered from the same site, the scientists say. A space between two of the fossil dog’s teeth indicates that domestication must have reached an advanced phase at that time, they argue. During initial stages of domestication, jaws shrink in size faster than teeth, producing dental crowding. Later in the domestication process, teeth get small enough to leave spaces.

Canine fossils from Goyet and several other sites older than Kesslerloch Cave fall within the size ranges of modern and ancient wolves, Napierala adds. Relatively short, robust snouts on the older fossils, initially cited as evidence of domestication, may denote an adaptation of wolves to hunting large Ice Age game, he holds.

Ancient dogs had shorter, broader snouts, wider mouths and wider brain cases than wolves, responds Germonpré. Brain studies indicate that dogs’ retinas became reorganized to focus on the central visual field, perhaps to assist in tracking human faces, at the same time that selective breeding produced shorter noses, he says.

Dogs older than the one at Kesslerloch Cave were relatively large, although not as large as wolves, Germonpré argues. Those dogs have been unearthed at sites that have yielded huge numbers of mammoth bones. People living in those areas may have used dogs to haul mammoth meat from kill areas and as sentinels, he proposes.

Napierala and Germonpré agree that a resolution of this debate demands the dogged pursuit of additional canine fossils.

Wired.com © 2010

Scradje

 

[Mythopoeika]

So...how old is that in dog years?

 

[rynner2]

Bark to the future: ice age puppies may reveal canine evolution
Studies on pair discovered perfectly preserved in the Yakutia region in Russia five years ago may provide clues about when dogs were domesticated
Agence France-Presse
Monday 28 March 2016 15.58 BST

The hunters searching for mammoth tusks were drawn to the steep riverbank by a deposit of ancient bones. To their astonishment, they discovered an ice age puppy’s snout peeking out from the permafrost.

Five years later, a pair of puppies perfectly preserved in Russia’s far north-east region of Yakutia and dating back 12,460 years has mobilised scientists across the world.
“To find a carnivorous mammal intact with skin, fur and internal organs – this has never happened before in history,” said Sergei Fyodorov, head of exhibitions at the Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University in the regional capital of Yakutsk.
The discovery could contribute to the scientific debate over the origin of domesticated dogs.

When the hunters stumbled on the first frozen pup in 2011, they alerted Fyodorov who flew out to the remote Arctic tundra, about 2,900 miles (4,700km) from Moscow and only 80 miles from the Laptev Sea, which borders the Arctic Ocean.
Last year he returned for a more thorough look and found the second puppy close to the same spot, farther down the slope. Both had died when they were about three months old.
It is likely they were both from the same litter, said Fyodorov.

Last week he oversaw the removal of the second puppy’s remarkably well-preserved brain – “the first in the world”, he said.
“Puppies are very rare, because they have thin bones and delicate skulls,” he said.
The duo have been named the Tumat dogs, after the nearest village to the site.

Fyodorov said a preliminary look at the mammoth remains also found at the dig suggested some had been butchered and burned, hinting at the presence of humans. It remains to be seen, however, whether the puppies were domesticated or wild.
The answer can only be determined by reconstructing their genomes, which would take at least a year.

“Thus far, the lineages of wolves that likely gave rise to dogs have not yet been discovered and it’s possible that these puppies could be on that lineage, which would be very exciting,” said evolutionary biologist Greger Larson, of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists behind a collaborative project aimed at finding out when and where dogs became the first domesticated animals.

What makes the dog particularly intriguing is that it managed to become “man’s best friend” even before humans became settled farmers.
It is still unclear whether dogs were domesticated in one place or in several places independently, and whether the process started when humans took in cubs or whether wolves gradually drifted to human sites in search of food.
Whatever their precise lineage, the Tumat pups will keep Fyodorov and other scientists busy for some time.

The second puppy’s preserved brain will be compared with that of modern dogs and wolves. Parasites found on its body will be analysed, as will the contents of its stomach, which Fyodorov is particularly excited about.
“When we opened it, we were very surprised. The second puppy’s stomach is mostly full of twigs and grass,” he said, wondering if perhaps the animals were not exclusively carnivorous or whether they started eating grass after they were trapped by a mudslide and began to starve.

“This material is really exceptional and unique,” said Mietje Germonpre, a palaeontologist from the Royal Belgian Institute who worked with Fyodorov on the project and came to Yakutsk to oversee the autopsy of the second puppy this month.
“The fact that soft tissue is preserved will give much more information compared to information that can be obtained from ‘normal’ fossils,” she said, meaning bones and teeth.

Fyodorov lamented the long time it takes to get ancient biological material to suitable labs due to financial constraints, the rugged terrain and red tape, which sometimes means that samples reach laboratories only six months later.
“Everyone understands that the tissue of mammoth fauna loses its structure with every passing second, even in the freezer,” he said.

etc...

https://www.theguardian.com/science...es-may-reveal-canine-evolution-yakutia-russia