Articles: Dehradun, Early Dogs, Warm Blooded Dinos, Louisiana Delta

Sharing some links from the past few days:

1) Dehradun.

A story of the transformation of a beautiful hill town to an ugly unplanned urban center. We shrug resignedly at many such tales from across the country. This one is of Dehradun. Himalaya towns can only be described as disasters in the making. Unscientifically built infrastructure on steep slopes, no garbage management resulting in enormous stray dog and pig populations roaming the streets, and a dwindling water supply. Yet these towns continue to grow, pointing to worsening opportunities for making a livelihood in the Himalayan rural landscapes. The 'smart city' reference is the ultimate insult of all.

Vanishing landscape of ‘smart city’ Dehradun.

2) Early Dogs.

The early stages of dog domestication may have seen a marked behavioral shift appearing before any distinct morphological change. This change in behavior, arising from docile wolves or 'protodogs' living near human camps would have entailed a change in diets.  Scientists have compared wolf and dog like remains from a 28,500 year old site in the Czech Republic. They looked at the dental microwear pattern of these two groups of canids and noticed that the dog like canids show a pattern consistent with eating more hard brittle foods. The wolves show patterns consistent with eating more flesh. 'Throw this dog a bone" wasn't an insult then.

Dental microwear as a behavioral proxy for distinguishing between canids at the Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) site of Předmostí, Czech Republic

write up: Dog domestication during ice age.

3) Warm Blooded Dinos?

Were Dinosaurs warm blooded like mammals? This debate has raged on for decades. Bone growth patterns have not given any unambiguous evidence of body temperature regulation. A new method known as clumped isotopes may provided a more reliable indicator of estimating body temperatures. Fossilized dinosaur egg shells contain the original calcium carbonate from which these shells were built. A variety of carbon isotopes (C12, C13) may bond with a variety of oxygen isotopes (O16, O17, O18) in the carbonate molecules (CO3). The degree of bonding or clumping of the heavier isotopes i.e. C13 to O18 varies with the temperature during mineral growth. Clumping is more at lower temperatures.

Scientists compared this C13-O18 clumpiness in dinosaur egg shells with C13-O18 clumpiness in the calcium carbonate of mollusc shells from the same fossil bed. Mollusc geochemistry is taken to be a proxy for the ambient conditions. They found out that the egg shells grew at temperatures between 25- 43 deg C, while the molluscs record growth at 25 -30 deg C. This suggests that dinosaurs were capable of maintaining a higher body temperatures than their surroundings.  As a carbonate sedimentologist, I found the details of methods in this paper  of great interest. The researchers used a variety of techniques to make sure that the egg shells had not been altered or subjected to higher temperatures later in their history, which would have made them an unreliable archive of the original temperature during growth. The analyzed egg shells came from Sauropods, Theropods and Ornithischians, a sample across the three main groups of dinosaurs. Very interesting study.

Eggshell geochemistry reveals ancestral metabolic thermoregulation in Dinosauria

write up - Fossil Eggshells Suggest All Dinosaurs May Have Been Warm-Blooded

4)  Eroding Louisiana Coastline.

Over the past several decades, barrages and levees have drastically reduced the amount of sediment that the Mississippi river is carrying to the sea. As a result, the famed Mississippi delta and coastline is eroding away. Efforts are on in a Boston warehouse to figure out a way to reverse this change. An ambitious engineering project which aims at opening up a portion of the levee to funnel sediment into the Barataria Basin south of  New Orleans is being planned. The hope is that the new channel will transport and deposit enough sediment to rebuild part of the endangered delta. A scale model built in a warehouse near Boston is testing the efficacy of this idea.

Fascinating to read the various problems geologists and engineers have to deal with when grappling with modifying nature at this scale.

To Save Louisiana’s Vanishing Coast, Build a Mini Mississippi Near Boston.

Scientists At Work- The Latest On Dog Domestication

Over at Science Magazine David Grimm has written a very informative article on the status of research on dog domestication. Its about the techniques being brought to bear on the question of the place and timing of dog origins and also about the scientists involved in the research, their pet theories and the conflicts within the field.

An excerpt:

Hulme-Beaman has spent the past 6 months traveling the world in search of ancient dog bones like this one. He's found plenty in this Ohio State University archaeology laboratory. Amid boxes stacked high with Native American artifacts, rows of plastic containers filled with primate teeth, and a hodgepodge of microscopes, calipers, and research papers, a few shoe and cigar boxes hold the jigsaw pieces of a dozen canines: skulls, femurs, mandibles, and vertebrae.

It's all a bit of a jumble, which seems appropriate for a field that's a bit of a mess itself. Dogs were the very first thing humans domesticated—before any plant, before any other animal. Yet despite decades of study, researchers are still fighting over where and when wolves became humans' loyal companions. “It's very competitive and contentious,” says Jean-Denis Vigne, a zooarchaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, who notes that dogs could shed light on human prehistory and the very nature of domestication. “It's an animal so deeply and strongly connected to our history that everyone wants to know.”

And soon everyone just might. In an unprecedented truce brokered by two scientists from outside the dog wars, the various factions have started working together. With the help of Hulme-Beaman and others, they're sharing samples, analyzing thousands of bones, and trying to set aside years of bad blood and bruised egos. If the effort succeeds, the former competitors will uncover the history of man's oldest friend—and solve one of the greatest mysteries of domestication.

The main points of contention:

a) did dogs originate in China around 15,000 years ago? this is based on the greater genetic diversity of East Asian breeds suggesting earlier origins than elsewhere, a notion that is opposed by some who say that diversity could reflect later migration.

b) did dogs originate in Europe/ West Asia? between 19,000 and 32,000 years ..  this is based on DNA comparisons of ancient and modern dogs and wolves from Europa and the America's which suggest that modern dogs are most similar to a now extinct population of wolves from Europe. This finding is criticized for its lack of samples of ancient dogs from China (there aren't any found as of yet) and for possible confusion in identifying ancients wolf  from ancient dog remains.

c) do unusual skeletons having wolf/dog mixed features as old as 30,000 from Belgium and Siberia represent ancestors of living dogs or extinct populations indicating failed attempts at domestication? ...  do these samples represent dogs at all or are they just strange looking wolves... a question that is now  being probed  used computer assisted morphological analysis.

there is plenty of think about..  read the full article here.

Dog Domestication Controversy: When, Where And How Many Times?

Interesting article in Nature on advances in our understanding about dog domestication. Apparently it is a "sexy field" of study:

"In recent months, three international teams have published papers comparing the genomes of dogs and wolves. On some matters — such as the types of genetic changes that make the two differ — the researchers are more or less in agreement. Yet the teams have all arrived at wildly different conclusions about the timing, location and basis for the reinvention of ferocious wolves as placid pooches. “It’s a sexy field,” says Greger Larson, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Durham, UK. He has won a £950,000 (US$1.5-million) grant to study dog domestication starting in October. “You’ve got a lot of big personalities, a lot of money, and people who want to get their Nature paper first.”

Fossils and genetic data are in conflict too. Fossil skulls with dog like features dating back to around 33,000 years have been reported from Siberia and Belgium. There is genetic work that suggests that China was where the first dogs were domesticated at a similar early date of around 32,000 years ago. Other scientists feel that these early lineages went extinct without contributing to extant dogs which according to them evolved post ice age maxima beginning around 15,000 years ago or so. Yet others think that dog domestication coincided with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

I think multiple episodes of domestication at various times is an entirely reasonable possibility given that both wolves and humans are hyper social and the opportunities to clash, cooperate and be fascinated with each other would have arisen again and again.

Expect more trading of intellectual blows as genomics will bring a tighter focus on the timing and geography of dog origins.

"The move to look at ancient DNA could make the small field of dog genetics even pricklier, because archaeological bone samples are so precious. Novembre says that he finds the field more fractious than human genetics, and says that his experience has given him pause about future canine work. “It’s really intense in the dog world,” he says. But Boyko, who also collaborates with the Chinese group, says that although the field is competitive, it remains collegial. “At the end of the day, we sit back and enjoy a beer together when we see each other.”

Out Of Siberia - Dogs Not Humans

The endearingly fascinating topic of dog domestication is in the news again. A skull with features that are a mix of wolf and dog was found in the Altai mountains of Siberia. It has been dated to around 33,000 years ago, before the Last Glacial Maximum, a period of intense expansion of polar and mountain ice sheets that began around 26,000 years ago and lasted until around 19,000 years ago.  It may represent an early wolf to dog domestication "in progress", but one that researchers feel was aborted by the advent of the last Glacial Maximum, when human populations in this region dispersed.  There is no evidence in younger deposits from this area of domesticated dogs, despite there being an occasional human presence.

I wrote about this topic some weeks ago and I commented that there probably were many such instances of marginal members of wolf packs getting acculturated to humans and getting self-domesticated or being pushed in that direction by human selection of docile traits. This is after all a meeting between two hyper-social species and contact between wolf and humans would have been a very common occurrence. Another equally old dog skull from a cave in Belgium suggests that there were multiple instances of dog domestication.

What struck me about this latest discovery is the age and the place - 33,000 years ago in the Altai region...... Denisovans??

Modern humans were not the only inhabitants of this region of Siberia.  A  population of another distinct human "species" or variety, descendants of an earlier human migration from Africa about half a million years ago, also lived in this region. Their remains  were found near Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia and judged to about 41,000 years old.

Its fascinating to speculate on whether there were any instances of wolf domestication in the company of these other human species. The Denisovans  (and the Neanderthals) were human lineages that had a long presence lasting more than one hundred thousand years in Asia and Europe and they would have encountered wolves routinely. We don't know anything about the social and cultural aspects of Denisovan society, but we do know that their cousins the Neanderthals lived in closely knit social groups.

A lot has been said about what the differences may have been between these archaic human groups and "modern" humans. Put forward are differences in cognition (we were just smarter), language and communication skills, division of labor (modern humans had more efficient food gathering strategies),  home range and mobility affecting trade and cooperation with other groups (Neanderthals did not trade as much with other groups). These are all speculative and maybe we can add one more.

These archaic humans did not or were unable to domesticate the wolf. No remains of domestication have been found so far, associated with the Neanderthals. Does the same apply to the Denisovans and other archaic human groups scattered across Africa and Asia?

That off course could be a reflection of something about their behavior as individuals and as a society. Perhaps the wolves themselves stayed away sensing a lack of that bit of empathy, perhaps their hunting methods did not require cooperation with a willing canine partner. If there is evidence for dog domestication or partial domestication about 33,000 years ago, could there be even earlier instances of the dog? And if the timing of dog domestication overlapped with modern human contact with Neanderthals and Denisovans from 45,000 to 30,000 years ago,  did the dog give some advantage to modern humans in eking out a living over these other human "species"?