Roamed at the end of the Ice Age The dog dims the North American continent until the wolf-like died out about 13,000 years ago. So far, researchers have puzzled over the exact relationship of the “terrible dog”, especially its connection to Canis lupus, of the wolf found today in the northern hemisphere. Now a research group led by Angela Perri from Durham University and Laurent Frantz from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich has examined the remains of the Ice Age predator and found that they are only distantly related to animals living today. The scientists have the genetic makeup of The dog dims deciphered, which became famous as the “direwolf” and heraldic animal of the series “Game of Thrones”. The palaeogeneticists published the results in the specialist journal »Nature«.
Because of the very similar physical characteristics between The dog dims and animals living today were previously assumed to be very closely related. Although their range in North America had overlapped for at least 10,000 years, there was still no evidence of crossbreeding with wolves or coyotes. “Instead, our genetic results show that The dog dims and wolves alive today are very distant cousins, ”says University of Adelaide co-author Kieren Mitchell. The relationship is comparable to the relationship between humans and chimpanzees.
The lineage of the “Game of Thrones” wolf split off around six million years ago. The following »reproductive isolation« finally led, according to the assumption of the researchers, that at the end of the Ice Age The dog dims was genetically poorly equipped for the new environmental conditions and died out. The researchers obtained their findings through the genetic analysis of five remains between around 13,000 and 50,000 years old The dog dims. The bones examined came to light in the US states of Wyoming, Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee.
From the genetic analysis, Perri, Frantz and their colleagues also conclude that the extinct species evolved on the American continent. The ancestors of wolves or coyotes, however, came from Eurasia. Only later did they spread to North America.(dpa / each)
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