When wandering bands of hunter-gatherers domesticated wolves scavenging their remains at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, they ushered in the tail-wagging canines and puppies we know and love today.
But dogs aren’t the only ancient canines that became companions. Archaeologists have found traces of foxes living among early communities throughout South America. This includes the nearly complete skeleton of an extinct fox found in northwestern Patagonia.
A team of researchers recently examined the fox bones, which were found among the remains of dozens of hunter-gatherers. The team’s findings, published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest that this fox lived alongside the people it was buried with.
“It seems that he was deliberately buried in this human cemetery,” said Ophelie Lebrasser, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Oxford and author of the new study. “This is a practice that has been suggested before, but to find it is a pleasant surprise.”
According to Dr. Lebrasseur, most archaeological traces of South American canids are usually isolated bones or teeth.
But the nearly complete skeleton of a fox-like animal was discovered when archaeologists excavated the Cañada Seca tomb in central Argentina in 1991.
The site, which was accidentally discovered by local clay miners, also contained the bones of at least 24 human individuals and artifacts such as necklace beads, lip ornaments and spearheads. Analyzes of human bones at the site reveal that these people lived about 1,500 years ago and led a nomadic lifestyle.
The Cañada Seca dog skeleton was originally identified as Lycalopex, a group of still-living fox-like dogs. But closer examination of the creature’s teeth showed it was more likely the extinct Dusicyon avus or D. avus, a medium-sized fox that weighed as much as a small sheepdog and resembled a jackal. D. avus inhabited grasslands in much of Patagonia from the Late Ice Age until about 500 years ago. It was closely related to the Falkland Islands wolf, which was hunted to extinction in 1876.
Dr. Lebrasser teamed up with Cynthia Abona, a biologist at the Institute of Evolution, Historical Ecology and Environment in Argentina, and several other researchers to definitively prove the identity of this skeleton. They ground up samples from the animal’s forearm and vertebrae, which they analyzed for fragments of ancient DNA.
Although the ancient DNA had degraded, the team was still able to recreate part of the fox’s genetic code. They compared it to complete genomes from domestic dogs and extant South American dogs, such as the closely related maned wolf. This strengthened the case that the animal buried at the Cañada Seca site was D. avus.
Genetic work also helped disprove the theory that these ancient foxes were doomed by hybridization. Some scientists speculate that when domestic dogs arrived in Patagonia about 900 years ago, they interbred with foxes. This would dilute the fox gene pool and potentially create hybrid hounds capable of competing with purebred foxes.
But Dr. Lebrasseur and her colleagues found that the extinct foxes were most likely too genetically different from domesticated dogs to produce fertile offspring. Instead, increasing human influence on the local environment and a changing climate may have played a greater role in the species’ demise.
Another mystery was why the remains of the fox were buried in Kanyada Seka’s grave. The radiocarbon age of the fox bones matches the age of the human bones at the site. The similar preservation of the bones of the two species also suggested that they were buried around the same time.
In addition, the researchers examined isotopic signatures preserved in the fox’s teeth. While most wild dogs eat almost exclusively meat, part of a fox’s diet consists of plant material similar to corn. This reflects the amount of plant material that the people buried at Cañada Seca ate.
The new discovery adds to growing evidence that foxes and other native dogs were an important part of ancient South American communities. Ornaments made from the teeth of fox-like culpeos adorn human remains in burial sites in Peru and Argentina. Archaeological sites in Chile reveal that other types of dog were also part of the local diet.
“An animal that ate like humans and was buried like them certainly must have had a close relationship with them,” said Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade, a zooarchaeologist at the University of La Coruna in Spain, who was not involved in the study.
This link between the fox and ancient humans may have evolved through systematic feeding. And it is plausible that foxes were used solely as companions, said Dr Grandal-d’Anglade, who has studied fox remains found in Bronze Age deposits on the Iberian Peninsula.
Although this fox appears to have lived alongside early hunter-gatherers in the region, Dr Lebrasseur said she would be hesitant to snuggle up with it on the sofa.
“I think the animal is probably domesticated, but it’s not something you would consider a real pet,” she said.
