They find the remains of Amer’s oldest dog …

Research from the University of Buffalo, USA, determined that the recent discovery of a 10,150-year-old fragment of a femur, believed to be the oldest remains of a dog in America, supports the theory that these animals could reach the mainland by traveling with humans through a coastal path.

The study published by the trade journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B indicates that the femur, found in Southeast Alaska, was subjected to mitochondrial genome analysis and the results concluded that it belonged to a lineage whose evolutionary history differed from that of the Siberian Dogs 16,700 years ago.

In turn, this indicates that the timing of this separation coincides with a period in which humans could have migrated to North America via a coastal route including southeast Alaska.

“Our primitive dog from Southeast Alaska supports the hypothesis that the first migration of dogs and humans occurred via the Pacific Northwest Coastal Trail rather than the Central Continental Corridor, which did would have been viable only about 13,000 years ago, ”says Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho, one of the report’s authors.

Meanwhile, Charlotte Lindqvist, a biologist at the University of Buffalo, pointed out that this study “He supports the theory that this migration occurred just as the coastal glaciers were retreating during the last ice age.”

Until now, the first ancient American dog bones to be DNA sequenced had been found in the American Midwest.

“Since dogs are linked to human occupation of space, our data helps identify not only a date, but also a location for the entry of dogs and humans into the Americas,” Lindqvist added.

The team came across the femur fragment while sequencing the DNA of a collection of hundreds of bones discovered several years ago in Southeast Alaska to study how the climate changes the Ice Age influenced the survival and movement of animals in this region.

Lindqvist explains that Southeast Alaska could have served as an ice-free rendezvous point, and now, thanks to the fragment of canine femur, they believe the early human migration through the region could be much greater than some previously suspected.

At first, this small bone fragment was thought to come from a bear, but when the DNA study was done it was not only confirmed to be from a dog, but dogs were shown of Southeast Alaska shared there is a common ancestor. around 16,000 years ago with the American dogs that lived before the arrival of European colonizers.

In addition, the analysis of the carbon isotopes of the bone fragment revealed that the dog probably had a marine diet, which could have consisted of foods such as fish and the remains of seals and whales.

The research also adds data to the layered history of how dogs came to populate the Americas. Some Arctic dogs later arrived from East Asia with the Thule culture, while Siberian huskies were brought to Alaska during the Gold Rush and others were brought in by European colonizers.