Remains of Ancient American Dogs Identified at Jamestown

IOWA CITY, IOWA—Science Magazine reports that Ariane Thomas of the University of Iowa and her colleagues have extracted mitochondrial DNA from dog jawbones unearthed at Jamestown between 2007 and 2010. The jawbones, which bear possible butchering marks and were found among fish bones and mussel shells, have been dated to the early seventeenth century. The dogs may have been eaten during the winter of 1609 to 1610, a period in the Jamestown colony known as the Starving Time, Thomas explained. Thomas compared the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from the mother, with that of modern and ancient dogs, and found that the Jamestown dogs’ maternal line was unrelated to that of European dogs, which were first brought to the Americas by the Spaniards in the late fifteenth century. Instead, the Jamestown dogs were most closely related to ancient dogs in Illinois and Ohio, and distantly related to ancient Arctic dogs, including a 10,000-year-old dog discovered in Alaska. The Jamestown dogs were not, however, related to dogs whose remains were discovered just 30 miles from Jamestown and dated from about 1000 to 1400 A.D. “There’s a lot more diversity than maybe we initially thought,” Thomas said. A study of the dogs’ nuclear DNA could reveal if the dogs were hybrids resulting from crosses with European dogs, she added. To read about specialized dog breeds introduced to North America by the Inuit, go to "World Roundup: Arctic."