Animal life | European colonizers have disappeared the American dog population | Trade | Technology and science | Science

The Europeans who colonized America since the 15th century decimated not only the native populations but also the domestic dogs that inhabited the continent, a group said. of experts after a The oldest dogs found on the American continent, known as "precontact", date from a few 9,900 years about 6,500 years later A team of 50 researchers analyzed DNA samples found in 71 ancient dogs found in North America and Siberia, which they compared genetically with modern dogs.

Their result, published Thursday at Science magazine confirms with an unprecedented degree of certainty that American dogs crossed the Bering Strait in the same way as humans.

The dogs lived for millennia with their owners, until they were eradicated in a few centuries after the arrival of Europeans.

The DNA of modern American dogs has nothing in common with the elders, who come down from "It's fascinating to see that a dog population that has lived in many parts of the Americas for thousands of years, and which was an integral part of Native American cultures, may have disappeared so quickly, "he adds. says lead author of the study, Lawrence Frantz, a former DNA expert at Queen Mary University in London

Possible reasons include illness, cultural persecution or the desire of Europeans to raise their own dogs. But the speed of the disappearance surprised the researchers

Modern farmers and modern Chihuahuas descended from the Eurasian breeds introduced into America between the 15th and the 20th century, writes archeologist Angela Perri In fact, there is still a genetic trace of old American dogs, but it is special: it is found in a cancerous tumor called CTVT, which is still manifested and transmitted by "Although this cancerous DNA has mutated over the years, it is very similar to the DNA of this first founding dog many thousands of years ago," says Mayor Ni Leathlobhair, Department of Veterinary Medicine. from the University of Toronto. Cambridge University

This study is an important but not final step in the understanding of canine evolution.

"The history of pre-contact American dogs is just starting to be tested," said Linda Goodman of Stanford and Elinor Karlsson of the University of Massachusetts in a separate article in Science. This story can only be written with future discoveries, and particularly with the study of more complete genomes than those analyzed so far.

(You can access the study by clicking HERE )

Source: AFP