[HN Gopher] Dire wolves were not wolves, new genetic clues reveal
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Dire wolves were not wolves, new genetic clues reveal
Author : pseudolus
Score : 68 points
Date : 2021-01-14 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It says that Dire Wolves are an offshoot of "dogs"... I thought
| dogs evolved from wolves in close contact with humans for long
| periods of time, circa 15-30k years ago. If that's true, how
| would these early dogs made it to North America? What am I
| missing?
| Udik wrote:
| > It says that Dire Wolves are an offshoot of "dogs"
|
| And then it says that their genetic analysis might indicate
| that they're not even part of the _canis_ genus. Which means
| they would not be considered dogs at all- so how could they
| have descended from "dogs"?
|
| Seems just sloppy terminology to me.
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| North America bad bridge to Asia long ago
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| But probably not in the 15-30kya range, right?
| svachalek wrote:
| Apparently yes, for most of that time period.
|
| "A reconstruction of the sea-level history of the region
| indicated that a seaway existed from c. 135,000 - c. 70,000
| BP, a land bridge from c. 70,000 - c. 60,000 BP,
| intermittent connection from c. 60,000 - c. 30,000 BP, a
| land bridge from c. 30,000 - c. 11,000 BP, followed by a
| Holocene sea-level rise that reopened the strait.[22][23]
| Post-glacial rebound has continued to raise some sections
| of coast."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia#Geography
| ovis wrote:
| They may be using the term "dog" to refer to Caninae (or
| Canidae?) rather than wolf-derived pets, judging by the
| description of the phylogeny.
| selfsimilar wrote:
| Exactly. Later in the article it's mentioned that the
| researchers believe the DNA evidence will move the dire wolf
| out of the 'canis' genus, which by implication will leave
| them in the 'canidae' family. However I think the author
| could have been more clear.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't realize that "dog" was equivalent to
| "canidae".
| dbingham wrote:
| That's the popular understanding, but genetic studies caused
| science to move away from that explanation some time ago. Dogs
| seem to have evolved from a common ancestor with wolves quite a
| ways back and show a good deal of genetic divergence. Though
| they are still included in the "Canus" genus.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Origin
|
| More detail:
|
| > Genetic studies show that dogs and modern wolves display
| reciprocal monophyly (separate groups), which implies that dogs
| are not genetically close to any living wolf population and
| that the wild ancestor of the dog is extinct.[4][2] An extinct
| Late Pleistocene wolf may have been the ancestor of the
| dog,[3][1] with the dog's similarity to the extant grey wolf
| being the result of genetic admixture between the two.[1] In
| 2020, a literature review of canid domestication stated that
| modern dogs were not descended from the same Canis lineage as
| modern wolves, and proposes that dogs may be descended from a
| Pleistocene wolf closer in size to a village dog.[5]
|
| > The genetic divergence between dogs and wolves occurred
| between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago, just before or during the
| Last Glacial Maximum[6][1] (20,000-27,000 years ago). This
| timespan represents the upper time-limit for the commencement
| of domestication because it is the time of divergence but not
| the time of domestication, which occurred later.[6][7] One of
| the most important transitions in human history was the
| domestication of animals, which began with the long-term
| association between wolves and hunter-gatherers more than
| 15,000 years ago.[4]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog
| hobby-coder-guy wrote:
| What is a village dog?
| eloff wrote:
| They're not referring to domestic dogs. Dogs must mean
| something else in that field. They state that dire wolves split
| from the common ancestor with wolves about 6M years ago and
| didn't interbreed. That makes them about as related to wolves
| as we are with chimps.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Dogs in this sense refers to any member of the Canis genus.
| Historically speaking, before taxonomic and genomic advances,
| coyotes, wolves, jackals, and, well, dogs, were all called
| dogs.
|
| Similar usage inconsistencies persist throughout the world.
| imbnwa wrote:
| >It had long been assumed that dire wolves made themselves at
| home in North America before gray wolves followed them across the
| Bering Land Bridge from Eurasia
|
| This sentence caught my mind because it really represented how
| much randomness and accident you can abstract away with your
| choice of words
| Cerium wrote:
| That sentence reads like a standardized English test question.
| Follow up questions from the passage: "Why did dire wolves
| choose North America as their home?", "True or False: Gray
| wolves choose to follow the dire wolves in search of open
| lands."
| svachalek wrote:
| Reminds me of SAT prep so many years ago.
|
| Answer key: "To get away from the crowd of gray wolves",
| "True"
|
| Young me: Are you _kidding_ me?
| some_furry wrote:
| The art at the top of the article looks suspiciously like it
| depicts dholes.
|
| https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/dhole
| cafard wrote:
| Shows what I know. I only ever heard the expression "dire wolf"
| in a Grateful Dead song.
| [deleted]
| Igelau wrote:
| Don't murder me, I beg of you don't murder me.
| quesera wrote:
| You should read more G.R.R. Martin! :)
| [deleted]
| peterbraden wrote:
| Doesn't load at all in firefox. I guess they only tested in
| chrome.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| not sure what setup you use, but for me (win 10 64b, latest
| firefox, running ublock origin and ghostery) works fine
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Side note: You probably want to switch to Privacy Badger.
| Less shakey than Ghostery with privacy and doesn't replace
| ads with its own.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| I use Firefox's content filter and it always to filter out
| the actual content of the page. Oddly enough, refreshing made
| it load just fine.
| arbitrage wrote:
| I'm sorry, I can't replicate. Firefox works fine, here.
| jhauris wrote:
| I think they fixed something. less than 5 minutes ago it
| didn't load for me, and suddenly it did.
| croisillon wrote:
| here too
| eloff wrote:
| Didn't load for me first time in Firefox. I refreshed and it
| worked.
| throwanem wrote:
| Link to the paper in _Nature_ :
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x
| budhajeewa wrote:
| Wolf or not wolf, winter is coming.
| eloff wrote:
| It's January 14. Winter can't get any more here (I got the game
| of thrones reference.)
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| I was about to make a reference to "six hundred pounds of sin"
| until I realized we'd be making two different popular cultural
| references.
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(page generated 2021-01-14 23:02 UTC)