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. 2021 Feb 24;288(1945):20203103.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.3103. Epub 2021 Feb 24.

An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas

Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho  1 , Stephanie Gill  1 , Crystal M Tomlin  1 , Timothy H Heaton  2 , Charlotte Lindqvist  1   3
Affiliations

An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas

Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho et al. Proc Biol Sci. .

Abstract

The oldest confirmed remains of domestic dogs in North America are from mid-continent archaeological sites dated approximately 9900 calibrated years before present (cal BP). Although this date suggests that dogs may not have arrived alongside the first Native Americans, the timing and routes for the entrance of New World dogs remain uncertain. Here, we present a complete mitochondrial genome of a dog from southeast Alaska, dated to 10 150 ± 260 cal BP. We compared this high-coverage genome with data from modern dog breeds, historical Arctic dogs and American precontact dogs (PCDs) from before European arrival. Our analyses demonstrate that the ancient dog belongs to the PCD lineage, which diverged from Siberian dogs around 16 700 years ago. This timing roughly coincides with the minimum suggested date for the opening of the North Pacific coastal (NPC) route along the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and genetic evidence for the initial peopling of the Americas. This ancient southeast Alaskan dog occupies an early branching position within the PCD clade, indicating it represents a close relative of the earliest PCDs that were brought alongside people migrating from eastern Beringia southward along the NPC to the rest of the Americas. The stable isotope δ13C value of this early dog indicates a marine diet, different from the younger mid-continent PCDs' terrestrial diet. Although PCDs were largely replaced by modern European dog breeds, our results indicate that their population decline started approximately 2000 years BP, coinciding with the expansion of Inuit peoples, who are associated with traditional sled-dog culture. Our findings suggest that dogs formed part of the initial human habitation of the New World, and provide insights into their replacement by both Arctic and European lineages.

Keywords: Canis lupus familiaris; North Pacific Coast; palaeodiet; palaeogenetics; precontact dogs; southeast Alaska.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) The PP-00128 bone remains, which are a piece of the dome-like head of a femur. The scale represents 5 mm. (b) Map indicating locations of remains for each ancient mitogenome used in this study of precontact dogs, Arctic sled dog and Zhokov dogs. The shapes of the dog samples represent subclade affinity (figure 2b) and colours correspond to three age classes and Inuit dog locations (see legend). The location of the southeast Alaskan dog specimen, PP-00128, is coloured in pink. (c) Map of the Alexander Archipelago, indicating the location of Lawyer's Cave (pink circle), where the PP-00128 remains were found. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
A tip-calibrated Bayesian phylogenetic tree of 1106 dog and wolf mitogenomes (see complete tree with tip labels in electronic supplementary material figure S8). (a) The complete tree showing the four main dog haplogroups (A–D), and subclades A2a and A2b. (b) The same phylogeny but showing only the subclades A2a and A2b, including the precontact dog subclades A2b1, A2b2 and A2b3 discussed in the text. Black dots indicate posterior probability higher than 0.95. Arrow with numbers pointing to selected nodes indicates divergence time estimates (in thousands of years). (Online version in colour.)
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Median-joining network of haplogroup A2 dog mitogenome sequences. Circle sizes are proportional to the number of individuals with each haplotype and coloured according to their age group or if they represent Inuit dogs (see their geographical locality in figure 1b). (Online version in colour.)
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