A domestic dog or a wolf? The difference seems quite easy to detect today, but the distinction was not always so obvious. For years, scientists fought to determine whether a couple of frozen puppies about 14,000 years ago were early domestic dogs or wolves. Now, a new analysis could close this debate, confirming that frozen puppies were probably not early domestic dogs, but wolves, based on bones, teeth and soft tissues of animals.
Posted today in Quaternary researchThe analysis also shows that the two puppies were brothers, sisters of about two months, and ate a diet of milk, meat and plants, with a woolly rhino as their final party.
“It was incredible to find two sisters of this era so well preserved, but even more incredible that we can now tell much of their history, until the last meal they ate,” said Anne Kathrine Runge, author of study of the University of York of the Department of Archeology, according to a Press release.
Read more: The origins of the dogs: When were domesticated by dogs?
Ice age puppies discovery
Frozed on the ground and the ice about 14,000 years ago, the “tumat puppies” were found in Siberia, about 25 miles from the town of Tumat, in 2011 and 2015. Their bodies were discovered inside their den, where they were trapped, buried and frozen after a probable landslide, around what seemed to be a human butcher shop.
That the puppies were discovered so close to a human gathering place, where the bones burned with the woolly mammoths were scattered, they created a debate about whether the puppies were early domestic dogs or wolves. Trying to determine its true identity, a previous study suggested that the puppies were probably wolves of a population that disappeared without any link with domestic dogs today.
To confirm that conclusion, the new analysis of bone, tooth and soft tissue indicates that the lifestyles and the puppies of the puppies were much more suitable for the wolves than for domestic dogs.
“While many will be disappointed that these animals are almost surely wolves and not early domesticated dogs, they have helped us to approach the environment at that time, how these animals lived and how remarkably similar are the wolves of more than 14,000 years ago to the modern wolves,” Runge said in the launch.
Read more: Ancient wolf DNA suggests two origins of modern dogs
Wool rhinos stomach
The stomach content of the puppies, which were absent from gigantic meat, were a particularly strong sign that the puppies were probably wolves.
Instead of going through humans to eat, puppies consumed solid foods such as birds, pastures, leaves and twigs, as well as milk from their mother.
“We can see that their diets were varied, which consist of animal meat and plant life, very similar to that of modern wolves,” said Nathan Wales, another study author of the Department of Archeology of the University of York, according to the press release. This varied diet also suggests that they lived in an environment similar to modern wolves, surrounded by various habitats and their inhabitants.
Based on his degree of digestion, the meat of rhinoos of Lanuda had been the final food of the Wolf puppies, a surprising finding, considering the massive size of the creature compared to the majority of the modern wolf dam. As such, the meat probably came from a calf of lanudal rhino, hunted and fed to the puppies by adult wolves, which were possibly larger in the ice age than today.
“The hunting of an animal as large as a [woolly] Rhinoceros, even one of the babies, suggests that these wolves are perhaps larger than the wolves we see today, ”said Wales.
According to the equipment, the soft tissues of the puppies provide important information about the lives and lifestyles of the wolves that the bones and teeth do not always provide.
“We know that gray wolves have existed as a species for hundreds of thousands of years,” Wales said. “However, soft tissues preserved in Tumat puppies give us access to other ways of investigating wolves and their evolutionary line.”
Read more: How dogs have uniquely evolved with humans like no other species
Sources of articles
Our writers in Discovermagazine.com Use studies reviewed by pairs and high quality sources for our articles, and our editors review to obtain scientific precision and editorial standards. Check the sources used below for this article:
Sam Walters is a journalist who covers archeology, paleontology, ecology and evolution for Discover, along with a variety of other issues. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
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