Study of ancient dogs in the Americas yields insights into human, dog migration

Date:

January 7, 2015

Source:

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Summary:

A new study suggests that dogs may have first successfully migrated to the Americas only about 10,000 years ago, thousands of years after the first human migrants crossed a land bridge from Siberia to North America.

The study looked at the genetic characteristics of 84 individual dogs from more than a dozen sites in North and South America, and is the largest analysis so far of ancient dogs in the Americas. The findings appear in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Unlike their wild wolf predecessors, ancient dogs learned to tolerate human company and generally benefited from the association: They gained access to new food sources, enjoyed the safety of human encampments and, eventually, traveled the world with their two-legged masters. Dogs also were pressed into service as beasts of burden, and sometimes were served as food, particularly on special occasions.

Continued ..

Snail genes reveal human migration to Ireland

A genetic similarity between snail fossils found in Ireland and the Eastern Pyrenees suggests humans migrated from southern Europe to Ireland 8,000 years ago.

The slimy creatures in Ireland today are almost identical to snails in Southern France and Northern Spain.

Whether an accidental visitor on a ship or brought along as a snack, the boat they were carried on did not appear to stop in Britain.

The findings are published in PLOS One.

As Britain emerged from the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, sea levels rose and landslides are thought to have triggered a great tsunami. Britain was transformed into an island, separated from mainland Europe and Ireland.

“The intriguing implication is that the genetics of snails might shed light on a very old human migration event,” Dr Angus Davison University of Nottingham

Land-dwelling animals were therefore no longer able to migrate from Europe over the seas without a little help.

It has long perplexed scientists that Ireland has plants and animals that are genetically different, and in some cases are even unique, to ones found in Britain.

Now scientists have found that a common garden snail, Cepaea nemoralis, is almost genetically identical to one found in the Eastern Pyrenees, but seems to have missed Britain on its journey over.

Read on

Skull pushes back clock on early human migration

An ancient skull discovered in a cave in Laos has pushed back the clock on human migration to Southeast Asia by as much as 20,000 years, a study has found.

The skull discovered in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos is the oldest modern human fossil found in Southeast Asia and is believed to be between 46,000 and 63,000 years old.

The find also reveals that early humans did not simply follow the Asian coast as they migrated from Africa to Australia, as some researchers have argued, but that some also moved inland into unfamiliar terrain.

"This fossil find indicates that the migration out of Africa and into East and Southeast Asia occurred at a relatively rapid rate, and that, once there, modern humans weren't limited to environments that they had previously experienced," said co-author Laura Shackelford, an anthropologist with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

While some human remains of about that age have been found in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, none have shown definitively modern human features or been as well dated as the Laos skull.

The discovery also reinforces genetic studies which indicate modern humans were living in the region at least 60,000 years ago.

"Given its age, fossils in this vicinity could be direct ancestors of the first migrants to Australia," Shackelford said in a press release.

"But it is also likely that mainland Southeast Asia was a crossroads leading to multiple migratory paths."

Continued:  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skull-pushes-back-clock-early-human-migration-190225614.html