Dogor is a preserved canine specimen that was found in the Siberian permafrost of Sakha in 2018. It is a remarkably well preserved two-month-old male puppy with fur and whiskers remaining. The animal has been determined to be 18,000 years old. At first, DNA sequencing was unable to identify the animal as either a dog or a wolf. Anders Bergström, a postdoctoral fellow in ancient genomics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, identified Dogor as an ancient wolf as reported in a research study on June 29, 2022 in Nature magazine.[1] However, the specimen did not belong to the ancient east Eurasian progenitor population of wolves from which dogs are thought to have evolved, suggesting perhaps a dual ancestry for dogs.
The specimen was named Dogor by scientists, with the word meaning "friend" (Cyrillic: Догор) in the local Yakut language.
Dogor was found in the permafrost near the Indigirka River, north-east of Yakutsk, Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia during summer 2018.[2][3] It is the body of a two-month-old male canine puppy.[4] The body is remarkably well preserved, and its fur, whiskers, nose and teeth remain intact.[4][5] A part of its rib bone was analysed by radiocarbon dating, which placed it at 18,000 years old.[5]
Due to the animal's age, it was possible that it represented an evolutionary link between dogs and wolves.[4] Scientists continue to debate the exact point at which dogs were first domesticated, but if Dogor was determined to be a dog, he would have been the oldest ever discovered.[4][5] Dogor was, therefore, described as coming from "a very interesting time in terms of wolf and dog evolution", possibly from around the time of the first domestication of dogs.[3]
DNA sequencing is usually sufficient to distinguish between dogs and wolves; however, even after a large amount of analysis, it was not initially possible to determine to which species Dogor belonged.[3] It was possible that Dogor represented a common ancestor of both species.[4] Further DNA sequencing was undertaken in Denmark to provide more insight.[4][6] Dogor was eventually identified as an ancient wolf in June 2022.[7][1]