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Dogor was two months old when he died and has been well preserved in the Siberian ice. But is he an early modern wolf – or one of the world’s very oldest domesticated dogs? |
How an 18,000-year-old puppy could change everything we know about dogs
UK Guardian Newspaper, Nov. 28, 2019 and CNN
The 18,000-year-old body of a near perfectly preserved puppy has left scientists puzzled.
Russian scientists discovered the body of the canine near Yakutsk, in eastern Siberia. Preserved by permafrost, the specimen's nose, fur and teeth are remarkably intact.
Using
carbon dating on the creature's rib bone, experts from Sweden's Centre
for Palaeogenetics were able to confirm that the specimen had been
frozen for around 18,000 years, but extensive DNA tests have so far been
unable to show whether the animal was a dog or a wolf.
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Name: Dogor.
Appearance: Sharp teeth, soft nose, fluffy all over, cute as hell.
Age: 18,000 years and two months.
Dogor was found by tusk hunters in the summer of 2018, buried in the permafrost near the Indigirka River, north-east of Yakutsk, Siberia.
Radiocarbon dating shows that Dogor is 18,000 years old, but he was so well preserved that even his eyelashes and whiskers are in good condition. On close inspection, scientists were able to tell that he was a puppy aged two months when he died.
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Before clean up - the 18,000 years old.
Credit: Love Dalen
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Poor Dogor! I hope he didn’t suffer? From the position of his body, it seems that he was not in distress.
Genome analysis at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden confirmed that he was male. He feels like a “very recently dead animal”, according to Love Dalén, one of the researchers.
He could have been some cave family’s beloved pet, right? That is the key question here.
So far, DNA analysis has not been able to establish Dogor’s species. He might have been a very early modern wolf. He might have been a very late ice-age wolf. He might even have been be a very early domesticated dog.
Is that why he’s called Dogor, because he’s either a dog or a wolf? No. It’s because dogor means “friend” in Yakutian.
Dogor might turn out to be a halfway creature, from the time when some wolves were turning into dogs.
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Modern dogs are thought to have been domesticated from wolves, but exactly when is unclear -- in 2017, a study published in the journal Nature Communications found that modern dogs were domesticated from a single population of wolves 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
