The evolutionary history of dogs in the Americas

Máire Ní Leathlobhair, Angela R Perri, Evan K Irving-Pease, Kelsey E Witt, Anna Linderholm, James Haile, Ophelie Lebrasseur, Carly Ameen, Jeffrey Blick, Adam R Boyko, Selina Brace, Yahaira Nunes Cortes, Susan J Crockford, Alison Devault, Evangelos A Dimopoulos, Morley Eldridge, Jacob Enk, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Kevin Gori, Vaughan Grimes, Eric Guiry, Anders J Hansen, Ardern Hulme-Beaman, John Johnson, Andrew Kitchen, Aleksei K Kasparov, Young-Mi Kwon, Pavel A Nikolskiy, Carlos Peraza Lope, Aurélie Manin, Terrance Martin, Michael Meyer, Kelsey Noack Myers, Mark Omura, Jean-Marie Rouillard, Elena Y Pavlova, Paul Sciulli, Mikkel-Holger S Sinding, Andrea Strakova, Varvara V Ivanova, Christopher Widga, Eske Willerslev, Vladimir V Pitulko, Ian Barnes, M Thomas P Gilbert, Keith M Dobney, Ripan S Malhi, Elizabeth P Murchison, Greger Larson, Laurent A F Frantz

Dogs were present in the Americas before the arrival of European colonists, but the origin and fate of these precontact dogs are largely unknown. We sequenced 71 mitochondrial and 7 nuclear genomes from ancient North American and Siberian dogs from time frames spanning ~9000 years. Our analysis indicates that American dogs were not derived from North American wolves. Instead, American dogs form a monophyletic lineage that likely originated in Siberia and dispersed into the Americas alongside people. After the arrival of Europeans, native American dogs almost completely disappeared, leaving a minimal genetic legacy in modern dog populations. The closest detectable extant lineage to precontact American dogs is the canine transmissible venereal tumor, a contagious cancer clone derived from an individual dog that lived up to 8000 years ago.