Posted by:
SL Cabbie
(
)
Date: March 24, 2011 07:16PM
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/12/2849.full>mtDNA Data Indicate a Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, Less Than 16,300 Years Ago, from Numerous Wolves
The implications for this are that there isn't that much "wiggle room" in the timetable on this one, assuming the folks in Siberia brought man's best friend along with them (the oldest dog "remains" in the New World trace back 9,400 years).
This particularly true if the "Berengia Standstill" hypothesis is upheld (suggesting an isolation period of 2,500 years or so of total genetic isolation). Of course there are the single versus multiple migration views (Perego took a huge hit from a fellow in Washington State who noted a "pre-Columbian outlier" found in some Ohio remains involving the D4h3 haplogroup he used to suggest coastal migration).
Simon's reply was that the "dating on the conrol reigions" of mtDNA was less precise than if the entire genome had been sequenced; He characterized the dates as "rubbery." However the entire genomes were sequenced in this one...
>The mean sequence distance to ancestral haplotypes indicates an origin 5,400–16,300 years ago (ya) from at least 51 female wolf founders. These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 ya, from several hundred wolves.
Genuine "Native American dogs" are possibly "extinct" because Indians preferred European breeds, but pre-Columbian finds have demonstrated they are descended from Eurasian wolves, same as the ones described, although we aren't finding their descendants.
Another interesting bit I found is that "black wolves" are strictly a North American phenomenon, and they may trace their origins to admixture hybrids with dogs brought over in the Berengia migration... The black coloration has survival value for forest wolves, where it's more common, but not with tundra wolves where their numbers are fewer, as one might expect...
Another one..
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_21_162/ai_95107141/>He and his international partners focused on stretches of DNA from the cells' mitochondria, or powerhouses, which pass from mother to pup. Based on similarities in that genetic material, 95 percent of the dogs that the researchers had sampled tome from just three lineages that seem to have arisen in East Asia, Savolainen and his colleagues say.
>To study New World dogs, Leonard and her colleagues worked with DNA from remains up to 1,400 years old. Thirty-seven came from archaeological sites in Peru, Bolivia and Mexico, and 11, from modern gold mines in the Alaskan permafrost.
Yes, there is considerable controversy about when dogs were domesticated; some still insist they accompanied our ancient grandparents out of Africa, but the DNA science tells us dogs are really Eurasian wolves...