PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Angela Perri
AU  - Chris Widga
AU  - Dennis Lawler
AU  - Terrance Martin
AU  - Thomas Loebel
AU  - Kenneth Farnsworth
AU  - Luci Kohn
AU  - Brent Buenger
TI  - New Evidence of the Earliest Domestic Dogs in the Americas
AID  - 10.1101/343574
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 343574
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/11/343574.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/11/343574.full
AB  - The domestication of dogs probably occurred in Eurasia by 16,000 years ago, with the initial peopling of the Americas likely happening around the same time. Dogs were long thought to have accompanied the first migrations into the Americas, but conclusive evidence for Paleoindian dogs is lacking. The direct dating of two dogs from the Koster site (Greene Co., Illinois) and a newly-described dog from the Stilwell II site (Pike Co., Illinois) to between 10,190-9630 cal BP represents the earliest evidence of domestic dogs in the Americas and individual dog burials in worldwide archaeological record. The ~6,000 year discrepancy between the timing of initial human migration into the Americas and the earliest evidence for domesticated dogs suggests either earlier dogs are going unseen or unidentified or dogs arrived later with a subsequent human migration.