Is it a dog or a wolf? The discovery of an 18,000-year-old frozen puppy

The body of an 18,000-year-old puppy, which was found in an almost perfect state, has left scientists baffled.

Russian scientists discovered the body of the canine near Yakutsk, in eastern Siberia. Preserved by permafrost – which is ice that must be frozen year-round – the animal’s nose, fur and teeth are extraordinarily intact.

Using the dating by carbon 14 in bone of the creature’s rib, experts from the Paleogenetic Center of Sweden were able to confirm that the animal was frozen for approximately 18,000 years. However, until now comprehensive DNA tests have failed to prove whether the animal was a dog or a wolf.

“It’s usually relatively easy to tell the difference between the two,” David Stanton, a researcher at the Center for Paleogenetics, told CNN.

“We already have a lot of information and with that amount of data I would expect to know if it is one or the other. The fact that we cannot distinguish them may suggest that it comes from a population that was ancestral to both dogs and wolves, ”he explained.

We now have some news on the 18,000 year old #wolf or #dog puppy.

Genome analyses shows it's a male. So we asked our Russian colleagues to name it…

Thus, the name of the puppy is Dogor!

Dogor is a Yakutian word for "friend", which seems very suitable. pic.twitter.com/epIz8mEpVW

— Centre for Palaeogenetics (@CpgSthlm) November 25, 2019

Stanton told CNN that the period to which the frozen puppy belongs is “a very interesting moment in terms of the evolution of wolves and dogs.”

“We don’t know exactly when the dogs were domesticated, but it may have been around that time. We are interested in knowing if it is a dog or a wolf, or maybe it is something halfway between the two, ”he added.

Other tests could provide more information on exactly when the dogs were domesticated, Stanton said.

It is believed that modern dogs come from a domestication of wolves, but exactly when that happened 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 years ago .

Here is another amazing find from the Belaya Gora site!

Radiocarbon dating says it 18,000 years old.

Question: is it a #wolf cub, or possibly the oldest #dog ever found?

We are hoping to answer this by sequencing it's genome (it has 43% endogenous DNA).

But what do you think? pic.twitter.com/MTZ918GFBf

— Love Dalén (@love_dalen) April 16, 2019

In contrast, a 2016 Oxford University study, published in the journal Science, suggested that dogs were domesticated independently of gray wolves twice during the Paleolithic era, once in Asia and once in Europe.

Scientists at the Paleogenetic Center said on Twitter that genome analysis had revealed that the puppy was male. They also noted that, after consulting with their Russian colleagues, they would call the Dogor puppy, which means “friend” in Yakutian.

The scientists plan to perform more genome data tests on the creature to discover more about its origins.