A 10,000-year-old canine bone was unearthed in an Alaskan cave near the site of the human remains.
For over a decade, archeologists believed that they possessed bear remains. Simply known to researchers as PP-0128, the bone fragments found in a southern Alaskan cave were believed to be from a large mammal that lived near the area thousands of years ago.
But recent DNA evidence shows indisputable evidence that the bone shards did not belong to an ancient bear but rather belonged to a 10,150-year-old ancient dog. The oldest evidence of domesticated dogs in the Americas.
Understanding the Oldest Domesticated Dog
The realization was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by Charlotte Lindqvist and her team. Initially, researchers analyzed PP-00128's remains to unravel what type of bear the bone came from. However, Lindqvist and her colleagues found that the bone fragments weren't bear but were a dog.
Anglea Perri, an archeologist from Durham University that was not involved in the study, says, "Ten or twenty years ago, we would have looked through a pile of bone fragments and not seen his." adding, "this is a nice example of what can be done with some of these advanced methods."
A study reveals that 23,000 years ago in what is now Siberia, humans and ancient gray wolves were surrounded by encroaching glaciers during the last Ice Age. Although no research isn't detailed on how the two species developed a symbiotic relationship, many hypothesize that it all begun with food scraps.
The History of Man's Bestfriend
Since then, man and dog were intertwined. Genetic evidence suggests that the two species left Eurasia and crossed the Bering Land Bridge to the ancient Americas. Lindqvist and her colleagues have now identified the mislabel PP-00128 as a genetic cousin of the first Siberian dogs.
Lindqvist says, "The archaeological evidence for humans and dogs in the New World is sparse, and there is a gap in time between archeological evidence and genetic estimates."
The now described ancient dog bones come from a critical time in history. Its age is a shade older than earlier dog remains found in Illinois, which indicates that domes domesticated in Eurasia spread with people to the Americas.
Dogs from the Midwest from a genetic group with other places like Missouri and Alabama, part of the dispersal of people through the American continent.
PP-00128 is distinct due to its genetic age that forms a group with earlier Siberian dogs. The bone fragments were unearthed in an Alaskan cave near another archeological site that contained human remains from the same era along the Alaskan coast.
Lindqvist explains that ancient dogs' location and movement are synonymous with ancient humans movements due to both species being closely intertwined.
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