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According to new research, two well-preserved Ice Age “puppies” found in northern Siberia may not be dogs at all.
Still covered with fur, naturally preserved in ice for thousands of years, the “tumat puppies” are known to contain hints of the last meal in the stomach, including meat from a wool rhino and the feathers of a bird called Wagtail.
Previously thought to be early domesticated dogs or tame wolves lived near humans, and remains of these animals were found near the wool mammoth bone bones burned and cut down by humans, suggesting that canines lived near the site where humans slaughtered mammoths.
According to a discovery published Thursday in the journal Quaternary Research, the researchers believed that the animals were 2-month-old wolf puppies and showed no evidence of interaction with people by analyzing genetic data in the intestine, teeth and soft tissues.
No mummy cubs, believed to be sisters, showed no signs of being attacked or injured, indicating that they died suddenly when their underground nest collapsed and trapped them 14,000 years ago. According to the study, the den collapse may be caused by a landslide.
The vast amount of data in the remains illuminates the daily lives of Ice Age animals, including their eating, which is similar to the habits of modern wolf.
“The two sisters of this era are well preserved, but more incredibly, we can tell their stories now,” wrote Anne Kathrine Wiborg Runge, the author of the Supervisory Research. “While many animals are almost certainly wolf rather than early domesticated dogs, many will be disappointed, they bring us closer to the environment of the time, the way these animals live and the similarities between wolves 14,000 years ago and modern wolf.”
Extensive studies of these pups and other specimens also illustrate how difficult it was when dogs, widely considered the first domesticated animal, became part of human society.
Discover the eating habits of bears
Trapped in melted permafrost, Tumat Puppies were found in the Syalakh ruins about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the nearest village of Tumat, one in 2011 and the other in 2015. They are about 14,046 to 14,965 years old. Study co-author Dr. Nathan Wales, senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of England, said hair, skin, claws and entire stomach contents can survive under the right conditions.
“For me, the most surprising thing is that archaeologists managed to discover the second Tumat Puppy a few years after the first discovery,” Runge told CNN. “There are very few two specimens that are well preserved and then turned out to be siblings/littermates. It's extraordinary.”
Like modern wolf, all the cubs eat meat and plants. Although wool rhino hunts wolf prey, the wool rhino skin in a puppy's stomach can prove the canine diet. Ruger said the rhino skin has blonde skin and is only partially digested, which indicates that the puppy has rested and died shortly after the last meal.
The color of the wool rhino fur is consistent with that of the calf, based on a study of teenage wool rhino specimens found in permafrost. Adult wool rhino may have darker fur. According to the study authors, adult wolves hunted calves and brought them back to their nests to feed their puppies.
“Hunting animals as big as wool rhino, even babies, suggests that these wolves may be bigger than the ones seen today,” Wales wrote in a statement.
The researchers also analyzed that the tiny plants remained fossilized in the bear's stomach, indicating that the wolf lives in a dry, somewhat mild environment that can support a variety of vegetation, including grassland grass, willow, willow and shrub leaves.
The stomach content is well preserved in the residue of mummy pups. -Mietjeexberonpré, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
In addition to eating solid food, the cubs may also care for milk from their mothers, the researchers said.
Scientists have found no evidence that mammoths are part of the bear diet, meaning that humans at the scene are unlikely to be feeding canine families. But is it possible for people to share wool rhino meat with their cubs? This is something Wales considers, but now he thinks the evidence points in another direction.
“We know that modern wolves hunt large prey, such as elk, moose and Musk cattle, and anyone who watches animal documentaries will know that wolves tend to be juvenile or weaker when hunting,” Wales wrote in an email. “I tend to explain that tumat puppies are part of the juvenile wool furry rhino (by adult wolf).”
The origin of wool rhino meat is impossible – a wolf backpack could have hunted calves or removed calves from corpses or slaughtered places – but given the age of the bears and the age of the cowboy ant collapsed, it seems that humans are less likely to feed them directly.
Wales said the pups were kept in the study and fed by their backpacks, similar to the breeding and raising young people today, further suggesting that the tumor puppies were wolves rather than dogs.
Dogs and Wolfs
Runge said drawings of wider Ice Age wolves were difficult because there were no written materials or cave art that depicted them, so it was unclear how wolves and ancient humans would interact.
“We must try to explain our own biases and preconceived ideas based on today’s human wolf interactions,” she wrote. “We then have to know that we can never answer some questions.”
Researchers are still trying to understand how domesticated dogs become companions of humans. One hypothesis is that wolf lives near humans and clears food. But the process of domestication will take generations and requires humans to tolerate such behavior. Another hypothesis is that humans actively capture and hand-raised wolves, resulting in some of them being isolated from wild populations, resulting in early dogs.
Previous DNA tests of pups showed that they might have come from now extinct wolf, which eventually disappeared, and the population did not act as a genetic bridge for modern dogs.
“When we talk about the origins of dogs, we are talking about the first home animal,” Wales said. “So, scientists must have really solid evidence to make claims about early dogs.”
Wales said all the evidence found by the authors of the new study is compatible with all evidence of a wolf living alone.
“Today, the garbage is usually greater than two, and Tumat puppies may have siblings escaped (same) fate,” he said. “There may also be more puppies or erosion losses in permafrost.”
Dr. Linus Girdland-Flink, lecturer in biomolecular archaeology at the University of Scottland Aberdeen, said evolutionary biology and ancient DNA research pointing out where and when dogs were domesticated, which remains the holy grail of archaeology. Although Girdland-Flink's research is about ancient wolf and dogs, he was not involved in the new study.
But it is not a straightforward to determine whether ancient puppies were early domestic dogs, wild wolves, scavengers or tame people, because archaeological records are scattered. There is no evidence that can lead to a definite answer. Comparisons involving pups are even more difficult, as adult traits help differentiate between wild wolves and domesticated dogs.
“Instead, we must aggregate different alternative evidence – archaeology, morphology, genetics, ecology – and think that they all fit them,” Girdland-Flink wrote in an email. “So, I highly welcome the new multidisciplinary reanalysis of Tumat puppies.”
Girdland-Flink was not surprised that the bear had nothing to do with the mammoth – there was no important evidence. In addition to the lack of a strong genetic relationship with the domestic dog, he agreed that the puppies must come from a population of wolfs that do not live with humans.
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