Two upcoming events with one sign up!
AaRC Online Conference – Tuesday, May 19 (virtual)
ICP In-Person Meet-Up – Monday, June 22 in Stockholm (in person)
Here is a link to register/submit an abstract forms.gle/Kse1kPYnpsVg...
This was a highly collaborative effort involving 68 authors representing 56 institutions. A huge thanks to the many geneticists and archaeologists that made this research possible!
Thanks also to Lauren Hennelly and Mikkel Sinding for writing a News & Views piece: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The paper is published alongside another paper led by William Marsch and Lachie Scarsbrook, reporting genomes from two other Paleolithic dogs from the UK and Turkey. Check that out too! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
We find an influx of Southwest Asian dog ancestry into Europe with agriculture, but the magnitude is smaller than in humans: only up to ~50% replacement in dogs. This suggests that the dogs from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies contributed substantially to the Neolithic farmer dog populations.
We also studied the impact the arrival of agriculture had on Europe’s dogs. We know that incoming farmers from Southwest Asia replaced 80-90% of the ancestry of humans in Europe. Did the same thing happen to dogs?
Image from the Skateholm Mesolithic site in Southern Sweden, credit: Lars Larsson.
We find the Kesslerloch dog is genetically closer to present-day dogs in Europe than those in Asia. This means the diversification of European dog ancestry had started already 14,200 years ago, and that there has been some degree of continuity in European dogs since the late Ice Age until today.
In a 2022 paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), we discovered ‘dual ancestry’ — dogs derive ancestry from one eastern wolf progenitor, and a second more westerly one. How do these pre-Neolithic European dogs fit into this?
We find they have predominantly or only eastern wolf progenitor ancestry.
The oldest dog is 14,200 years old, from Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland. This maxilla has long been one of the most iconic likely Paleolithic dog specimens, and we now confirm genetically that it is indeed a dog.
Image © Cantonal Archaeological Service (KASH) of Schaffhausen, photo: Ivan Ivic.
We analysed 216 canid remains, mostly from pre-Neolithic European contexts. To improve DNA recovery, we developed a genome-wide capture approach targeting 500,000 SNPs. We were able to obtain enough DNA to determine dog-vs-wolf ancestry for 2/3rds of the remains.
Out today is our paper 'Genomic history of early dogs in Europe', in which we uncover the identity of the dogs that lived in Europe before agriculture—during the Paleolithic & Mesolithic periods: doi.org/10.1038/s415.... A thread ⬇️ (10)
@biouea.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social
#AaRCademy is back with another animal #aDNA workshop. This time, @jolijnerven.bsky.social will showcase the state-of-the-art methods to explore the relatedness between our samples. Join us online on April 16th, 14:00 CET!
It's that time again... AaRCTikTalk this Friday!! Anne Runge will talk about microbial/pathogen DNA from prehistoric faunal remains🦠🦴🧬, & Anna Nagel will explore multispecies time calibrations! 🧬🕰️ Hurray! Don't miss it! 🕺 @aarc-community.bsky.social
I opened a gate for Stephen Hawking to roll into Sheeps Green in Cambridge, where cattle graze. Unfortunately there was then a cow standing on the path and it wouldn't move, so Stephen had to turn around.
A German Shepherd and a chihuahua relax together in the grass. Stock photo.
A collection of articles from The Genetics of Canine Domestication, Migration, and Behavior Special Feature highlights research on the evolutionary history of dogs and the genetic basis of dog behavior. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/vLlW50XAO6A
Human prehistory keeps delivering surprises, here in the shape of wolves. A very fun project to work on 👇
A PhD project on historical genomics in the declining red squirrel in Britain is available in my group, through the @aries-dtp.bsky.social. Use historical genomes to track the effects of decline and genetic rescue in this charismatic species. aries-dtp.ac.uk/studentships...
And the registration is open for our next AaRCademy workshop! Join us on February 3rd to learn how to reconstruct the demographic history of a population with Pablo Librado. Registration through the QR code or following this link: tinyurl.com/2nysdwhv
A PhD project in human genomics with me is open for applications through the @nrpdtp.bsky.social. Use biobank-scale genomics datasets to answer long-standing questions about the evolution of our species: biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/the...
📢🚨Please share! We’re hiring! 📢🚨Have a strong interests in wildlife ecology and gut microbiome bioinformatics? 3 year Senior Research Associate for NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant. Apply here: vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/18.... Informal enquiries welcome! drgldavidson.github.io/ACMEresearch
Boarding the AaRC cover
Amanda v. Meuser presenting her talk: Evolutionary dynamics of extinxt and extant moose in North America
William Marsh presenting Life of Dogs - Dogs were widely distributed in West Eurasia during the Palaelothic
Crowd’s view of Deon de Jager’s presentation of the MInAS project
We had a great time yesterday Boarding the AaRC at #ISBA11! Thanks everybody for coming to our first in-person event!
I am starting a computational lab at LIOS, Riga, Latvia, and going to recruit a few people. Please DM if you are interested in a postdoc or PhD position in my Metabolic Research Group within the TARGETWISE project. I can highly recommend Riga, it is a beautiful city with very good living conditions.
Don't miss the AaRC pre-ISBA event on the 26th of August - anyone interested in ancient DNA in animals is welcome to come along.
And if you didn't get a talk at ISBA itself, submit an abstract here!
Postdoc position in my group in Tokyo!
Please get in touch if you are interested.
And happy to discuss projects - these would range from developing new methods to analysis of new genomes that we are now sequencing in the lab.
Job Ad: www.riken.jp/en/careers/r...
Lab page: speidellab.github.io
A 4-year postdoc position in population genomics is available in my group at the University of East Anglia, to work on a project sequencing a thousand fox genomes across rural and urban environments in the UK.
vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/15...
Our updated AaRConference flyer! Sign up to seminar mailing list for this and our other monthly seminar at www.animal-adna.org/projects/
#adna
Wow! Can you get a DNA sample please? 😀
In this comment piece with James Fellows Yates and Christina Warinner (@christinawarinner.bsky.social), we highlight the mounting problems with data archiving and metadata reporting in ancient DNA research. The field cannot afford to keep neglecting this issue.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...