An 18,000-year-old puppy was recently discovered perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost and is possibly the “oldest confirmed dog” in history.
Swedish researchers shared images of the pooch.
According to reports, the researchers found the canine in the Siberian Permafrost in last year’s summer.
The researchers studied the canine for over a year, and they were amazed by the fact that it was preserved really well.
But the researchers are not sure if the canine is a dog or a wolf.
Love Dalén, 44, and his colleague Dave Stanton, 34, the researchers studying the pooch, believe the dog could possibly be the earliest confirmed dog.
If the dog does turn out to be the oldest confirmed dog, the story of the pooch can help us know about when the wolves got domesticated.
Love and Dave have named the male pooch as “Dogor”, which is a name for a dog or wold.
Because the pooch was preserved well in the ice, the pooch has an exposed rib cage that the animal died very recently.
Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics, talked about how well preserved the animal is.
Love said, “It was amazingly well preserved even before they cleaned it up. [When we found it] we didn’t know how old it was. They said they found it in the permafrost but it happens that things get frozen in there that are only a few hundred years old or even a few decades.”
Love added, “We were excited about it but we had a healthy dose of scepticism until we radiocarbon dated it. Obviously when we got the results that it was 18,000 years old, that changes everything. When we got that result it was amazing. 18,000 years ago is an interesting time period where we think a lot of stuff is happening with both wolves and dogs genetically.”
Love continued, “We cannot separate it from a modern wolf, Pleistocene [Ice Age] wolf or dog. One reason why it might be difficult to say is because this one is right there at the divergence time. So it could be a very early modern wolf or very early dog or a late Pleistocene wolf.”
Dogor was found in a remote part of north-east Siberia that is located near Belaya Gora.
The remains of Dogor were brought to Sweden for further studies.
Dogor was well preserved because it remained uncovered in a tunnel dug into the permafrost.
Researchers may answer some of the biggest questions that are being asked in the field of dogs.
Stanton, a researcher from Sweden, said, I feel fairly nervous about messing something up in the lab. You don’t want to screw it up. It seems that dogs were domesticated from a lineage of wolves that went extinct. So that’s why it’s such a difficult problem to work on to understand where and when dogs were domesticated.”
Stanton added, “If you want to find the answer to that you need to look at ancient samples because the population they were domesticated from doesn’t appear to be around anymore. It’s specimens like this that could help clear that up but we don’t have the results yet to speculate on that.”
Sergey Federov removed dirt from the fur of the animal.
After removing the dirt, the rib cage and the spine of Dogor showed up.
Sergey said, “Just imagine, this puppy has been lying underground in the same pose and condition for 18,000 years without being disturbed at all. I really carefully removed the dirt and other debris stuck to its body step by step, revealing a wonderful condition fur which is extremely rare for animals of that time period.”