Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News
Topics: Science, Weird, Animals, Dogs, Technology
Rhiannon Ingle
The mystery of a 18,000-year-old puppy found frozen in ice which was thought to be 'oldest confirmed dog' has finally been solved by scientists.
At long last, we finally have a shocking answer to the bizarre phenomenon and it is not what any of us were expecting.
The way-past-pension-age pup, nicknamed Dogor, was perfectly mummified all those years ago and the truth about the little creature has only now been revealed.
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New research from scientists has discovered the true origins of the puppy who was found perfectly preserved - fur and all - in the Siberian permafrost back in 2018.
The bizarre discovery has since sparked a heated debate over the fossilized dog's lineage but all other theories can now be put to bed with new analysis of the canine's genome proving exactly what Dogor is.
Scientists studied the genome of the dog, alongside the genomes of 72 ancient wolves, in a hopes of understanding a little bit more about man's best friend and how humans have historically been able to master dog domestication.
Before the breakthrough discovery, the researchers didn't know whether the 'amazingly well-preserved' creature - who sported a full set of nashers and whiskers - was a dog or wolf.
But, we now know exactly what species the 'oldest confirmed dog' actually is.
Dogor is no dog and is, in fact, a wolf and it was not even closely related to the earliest dogs.
"We know that dogs were the first animal to be domesticated way back in the ice age," explained Anders Bergström, a postdoctoral fellow in ancient genomics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, to Live Science.
He continued: "But other aspects of their domestication are some of the big mysteries of human prehistory.
"We don't know where in the world it happened, we don't know what human group was involved, and we don't know whether it happened once or multiple times."
The mummified creature's genome was one of 66 never-before-sequenced ancient wolf genomes studied by Bergström and the other researchers.
It's a widely-known fact that dogs were domesticated from wolves, but, due to the genes of modern wolves changing so much through time, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact time the once ferocious and wild beasts became cute little good boys.
Bergström explained that dogs started becoming domesticated any time between about 30,000 years ago and 14,000 years ago.
The team also found that dogs are more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to ancient wolves from western Eurasia.
He said: "This suggests to us that probably domestication happened somewhere in the East, somewhere in Asia, and probably not in Europe.
"However, Asia is, of course, very large; we can't really narrow down with more precision where it happened."
While we still have a lot to learn about the bond between doggos and humans - it's fair to say that we're a whole lot closer now that Dogor's true origins have finally being confirmed.