The first domesticated dogs to be kept in the Americas were not descendants of North American wolves, as sometimes suggested, but were brought across from Siberia by humans more than 10,000 years ago, according to a study published today (July 5) in Science. By analyzing ancient and modern dog genomes, researchers also found that, despite surviving alongside humans for millennia, those animals were all but wiped out with the arrival of European settlers from the 15th century, who brought other dogs that would become the ancestors of modern North American breeds.
“It is fascinating that a population of dogs that inhabited many parts of the Americas for thousands of years, and that was an integral part of so many Native American cultures, could have disappeared so rapidly,” study coauthor Laurent Frantz of Queen Mary University and the University of Oxford says in a statement. “Their near-total disappearance is likely due ...
