A perfectly preserved body found in the ice of the Siberian permafrost could be the oldest ever confirmed dog.
The 18,000-year-old pup nicknamed Dogor – a pun on ‘dog or wolf’ – was found in 2018 and has been studied since then by Love Dalén and Dave Stanton.
They have been trying to work out if it is a wolf or a dog because it comes from the point in history where dogs were domesticated.
If it turns out that it is a dog, it will help researchers learn more about when wolves were tamed.
Love said that when you hold it, it feels like a very recently dead animal. Pictures show the dog covered in fur apart from an exposed rib cage, its eyes closed and a perfectly preserved set of teeth.
Love, a professor of evolutionary genetics, said: ‘It’s pretty special because you’re holding it and it really feels like a very recently dead animal.
‘But you think about it and this was an animal that lived with cave lions and mammoths and woolly rhinos. So it’s pretty awesome. It was amazingly well-preserved even before they cleaned it up. ‘
‘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.“
He cannot separate it from a modern wolf… 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. If it turns out to be a dog, I would say it is the earliest confirmed dog.
Fellow researcher Dave said the dog was found in a tunnel that was dug into the permafrost, which is why it is so well preserved.
