Ancestors of American dog breeds may have walked across the Bering Strait rather than being brought across the ocean.
Peter Savolainen at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Solna, Sweden, and his colleagues collected mitochondrial DNA from blood or cheek cells of 347 individuals of indigenous American breeds, such as Chihuahuas, Peruvian hairless dogs (pictured) and Canadian Eskimo dogs. The authors compared this DNA to that of modern European and East Asian dogs, as well as to 24 preserved New World specimens dated to long before Christopher Columbus set sail.
Modern native American canines, such as the feral Carolina dog, still resemble their pre-Columbian American counterparts, having no more than 30% European heritage. These modern breeds descended from Asian breeds brought by human migrants as long as 15,000 years ago, the authors suggest.
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Old origins for New World dogs. Nature 499, 256 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/499256c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/499256c
