Scientists don't know if this 18,000-year-old frozen puppy is a wolf or a dog
Specimen was found in Siberia in 2018 by people looking for mammoth tusks
When Love Dalén first saw the frozen puppy that had been preserved in the Siberian ice, he thought it might have died about a decade ago.
But it turns out, it's around 18,000 years old.
"It has perfectly preserved fur and paws and ears and it has whiskers and a black nose and pink gums between the teeth and so on," Dalén, a professor in evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden, told As It Happens guest host Gillian Findlay.
Dalén was working in Russia in 2018 when he got a call that local tusk hunters — people searching for mammoth tusk — had found the specimen near Yakutsk in eastern Siberia.
Dog or wolf?
He took a sample of one of the ribs for radiocarbon dating to determine how old it was. He also learned that it was male, and had died at two-months old.
But after DNA tests, Dalén and his colleagues were unable to determine if it's a dog or a wolf
"Normally if you do this on modern dogs or a modern wolf it would be super easy to say," he said.
We now have some news on the 18,000 year old <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wolf?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#wolf</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/dog?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#dog</a> puppy.<br><br>Genome analyses shows it's a male. So we asked our Russian colleagues to name it...<br><br>Thus, the name of the puppy is Dogor!<br><br>Dogor is a Yakutian word for "friend", which seems very suitable. <a href="https://t.co/epIz8mEpVW">pic.twitter.com/epIz8mEpVW</a>
—@CpgSthlmDalén said this specimen is from a time period that is likely very important to the understanding of the origin of dogs and wolves.
At some point, a certain population of wolves domesticated into the modern dog. But the question still remains when and how this happened.
'A missing link'
This puppy may be the answer.
"We think maybe this means that this specimen comes from the time period right around the time when dogs and wolves diverged," he said.
"Or it might even be kind of a missing link or originate from a population that was the common ancestor of dogs and wolves."
More extensive genome testing could answer the question of when dogs were domesticated.
But even if it ends up being a wolf, it could hold answers.
"I think either way this will be really interesting, either to understand the origin of the modern wolves or to understand the origin of dogs," Dalén said.
Dogor the pup
After asking their Russian colleagues, the researchers decided to name the puppy Dogor which means "friend" in Yakut.
"It's of course also wordplay by the Russians on the question of whether it's a dog or something else," Dalén said.
Written by Sarah Jackson. Produced by Katie Geleff.