Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic
Date
2019-12-04
Authors
Ameen, Carly
Feuerborn, Tatiana R.
Brown, Sarah K.
Linderholm, Anna
Hulme-Beaman, Ardern
Lebrasseur, Ophélie
Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S.
Lounsberry, Zachary T.
Lin, Audrey T.
Appelt, Martin
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Carly Ameen, Tatiana R Feuerborn, Sarah K Brown, Anna Linderholm, Ardern Hulme-Beaman, Ophélie Lebrasseur, Mikkel-Holger S Sinding, Zachary T Lounsberry, Audrey T Lin, Martin Appelt, Lutz Bachmann, Matthew Betts, Kate Britton, John Darwent, Rune Dietz, Merete Fredholm, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Olga I Goriunova, Bjarne Grønnow, James Haile, Jón Hallsteinn Hallsson, Ramona Harrison, Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Rick Knecht, Robert J Losey, Edouard Masson-MacLean, Thomas H McGovern, Ellen McManus-Fry, Morten Meldgaard, Åslaug Midtdal, Madonna L Moss, Iurii G Nikitin, Tatiana Nomokonova, Albína Hulda Pálsdóttir, Angela Perri, Aleksandr N Popov, Lisa Rankin, Joshua D Reuther, Mikhail Sablin, Anne Lisbeth Schmidt, Scott Shirar, Konrad Smiarowski, Christian Sonne, Mary C Stiner, Mitya Vasyukov, Catherine F West, Gro Birgit Ween, Sanne Eline Wennerberg, Øystein Wiig, James Woollett, Love Dalén, Anders J Hansen, M Thomas P Gilbert, Benjamin N Sacks, Laurent Frantz, Greger Larson, Keith Dobney, Christyann M Darwent, Allowen Evin. 2019. "Specialized sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic.." Proc Biol Sci, Volume 286, Issue 1916, pp. 20191929 - ?. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1929
Abstract
Domestic dogs have been central to life in the North American Arctic for millennia. The ancestors of the Inuit were the first to introduce the widespread usage of dog sledge transportation technology to the Americas, but whether the Inuit adopted local Palaeo-Inuit dogs or introduced a new dog population to the region remains unknown. To test these hypotheses, we generated mitochondrial DNA and geometric morphometric data of skull and dental elements from a total of 922 North American Arctic dogs and wolves spanning over 4500 years. Our analyses revealed that dogs from Inuit sites dating from 2000 BP possess morphological and genetic signatures that distinguish them from earlier Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and identified a novel mitochondrial clade in eastern Siberia and Alaska. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in modern Arctic sledge dogs despite phenotypic differences between archaeological and modern Arctic dogs. Together, our data reveal that Inuit dogs derive from a secondary pre-contact migration of dogs distinct from Palaeo-Inuit dogs, and probably aided the Inuit expansion across the North American Arctic beginning around 1000 BP.
Description
License
© 2019 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.