Analysis of DNA extracted from a fossil tooth found in 1975 in a cave called Razboinichya in southern Siberia, Russia, confirms that the tooth belonged to one of the oldest known ancestors of the modern dog.
33,000-year-old skull of one of the oldest known domestic dogs (Nikolai Ovodov et al., 2011)
The Razboinichya cave was discovered in 1962 in the northwestern part of Altai Mountains. First paleontological survey was conducted by Dr Nikolai Ovodov in 1975, when complete skull and mandibles of a dog-like canid were found.
The cave is about 90 m long. Fossil-bearing sediments in the cave contain remains of permafrost and frozen mummified animal tissues, and numerous bones of mammals and birds. More than 70,000 mammalian bones and bone fragments were found in the cave. Large mammals are represented mainly by foxes, cave hyena Crocuta spelaea, grey wolf Canis lupus, and brown bear Ursus arctos.
Scientists believe that the cave was primarily used in antiquity by hyenas as a den: the remains of at least 137 individual hyenas were found. Brown bears and wolves also appear to have used the grotto as a den on occasion. Among other animals, the most numerous are ibex, sheep and hares. No artifacts were recovered from this layer but the presence of small charcoal pieces and burnt bones probably testify that ancient people visited the cave occasionally.
The new study, published in the open access journal PloS ONE, evaluates the relationship of the 33,000-year-old fossil from Siberia to modern dogs and wolves based on DNA sequence.
Human domestication of dogs predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, but when modern dogs emerged as a species distinct from wolves is still unclear. Although some previous studies have suggested that this separation of domestic dogs and wolves occurred over 100,000 years ago, the oldest known fossils of modern dogs are only about 36,000 years old.
A team of scientists led by Dr Anna Druzhkova from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Russian Federation, found that the fossil, named the ‘Altai dog,’ is more closely related to modern dogs and prehistoric canids found on the American continents than it is to wolves.
“These results suggest a more ancient history of the dog outside the Middle East or East Asia, previously thought to be the centers where dogs originated,” the scientists said.
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Bibliographic information: Druzhkova AS et al. 2013. Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog. PLoS ONE 8 (3): e57754; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057754
