Ancient dog bone reveals when man’s best friend immigrated to North America

Researchers have narrowed down the timeline of when man’s best friend might have migrated to North America based on a 10,000-year-old bone fragment from a dog found in Southeast Alaska.

The femur fragment, smaller than the size of a penny, was discovered by surprise as scientists studied the impact of climate change during the Ice Age on animal survival and movements, according to a press release from the University of Buffalo.

Researchers were sequencing DNA from a collection of hundreds of bones found in the area years ago when they realized that the tiny bone, which was originally believed to be from a bear , contained DNA from a dog that lived about 10,150 years ago, the statement said.

“It all started with our interest in the impact of ice age climate change on the survival and movement of animals in this region,” said Charlotte Lindqvist, evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo, lead author of the study. published Tuesday in the British journal The Royal Society, said in a statement. “Southeast Alaska could have served as an ice-free stopping point, and now – along with our dog – we believe the early human migration through the region could be much greater than some previously suspected.

Dogs were domesticated in Europe between 32,000 and 18,800 years ago. The results suggest that the dogs first migrated to the Americas around 16,000 years ago, according to the study.

DNA from the bone suggests it came from a dog that diverged from a Siberian dog 16,700 years ago, scientists have determined. The timing of this split coincides with a period when humans were able to migrate to North America along a coastal route that included southeast Alaska.

According to the study, several waves of dogs migrated to the Americas. Arctic dogs arrived from East Asia with the Thule, ancestors of all modern Inuit peoples living in the Arctic. Siberian huskies were brought to Alaska during the Gold Rush, and other dogs were brought in by European colonizers.

But exactly when the dogs first ventured into the Americas was previously unclear. The bone finds coincide with the arrival of humans in the Americas after the last Ice Age when coastal glaciers began to retreat.

This suggests “that dogs accompanied the first humans who entered the New World,” according to the study.

“The history of dogs has been closely linked, since Antiquity, to that of the humans who domesticated them,” the statement said.

However, the fossil record of ancient dogs on the North American continent is still incomplete, so any new remains found will provide important clues, said Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho, a biological science student at the University of Buffalo. .

Before the discovery, the first ancient dog bones found in the United States were in the Midwest, Coelho said.