Koungoulos, Loukas G

Hulme-Beaman, Ardern

Fillios, Melanie

Kelly, Mick

Slade, Joan

Ellis, Coral

Reyland, Maureen

Winch, Patricia

Kelly, Daniel

Clark, Warren

Mitchell, Ernest

Johnston, Ivan

2024-09-18

<p>The dingo is a wild dog endemic to Australia with enigmatic origins. Dingoes are one of two remaining unadmixed populations of an early East Asian dog lineage, the other being wild dogs from the New Guinea highlands, but morphological connections between these canid groups have long proved elusive. Here, we investigate this issue through a morphometric study of ancient dingo remains found at Lake Mungo and Lake Milkengay, in western New South Wales. Direct accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates from an ancient Lake Mungo dingo demonstrate that dingoes with a considerably smaller build than the predominant modern morphotype were present in semiarid southeastern Australia c.3000–3300 calBP. 3D geometric morphometric analysis of a nearcomplete Mungo cranium fnds closest links to East Asian and New Guinean dogs, providing the first morphological evidence of links between early dingoes and their northern relatives. This ancient type is no longer extant within the range of modern dingo variability, but populations from nearby southeastern Australia show a closer resemblance than those to the north and west. Our results reafrm prior characterisations of regional variability in dingo phenotype as not exclusively derived from recent domestic dog hybridisation but as having an earlier precedent, and suggest further that the dingo’s phenotype has changed over time.</p>

Scientific reports, 14(1), p. 1-12

2045-2322

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/65062

en

Nature Publishing Group

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Phenotypic diversity in early Australian dingoes revealed by traditional and 3D geometric morphometric analysis

Journal Article

Publication