科學(xué)家:是狗還是狼?

俄羅斯科學(xué)家在西伯利亞?wèn)|部雅庫(kù)茨克附近發(fā)現(xiàn)了一具1.8萬(wàn)年前犬類的冰凍遺骸，但這只小狗的神秘起源卻令人費(fèi)解。

Despite the fossil being uncommonly well-preserved — with its nose, fur and teeth still intact — geneticists can’t decide one thing: Is the specimen a dog or a wolf?

盡管這具化石保存異常完好——鼻子、皮毛和牙齒仍然完好無(wú)損——但遺傳學(xué)家們無(wú)法確定一件事:這個(gè)標(biāo)本是狗還是狼?

Radiocarbon dating of a rib bone by experts from Sweden’s Centre for Palaeogenetics reveals the animal’s age, but further DNA testing has not definitively confirmed its canine species.

來(lái)自瑞典古遺傳學(xué)中心的專家對(duì)一根肋骨進(jìn)行了放射性碳測(cè)年，發(fā)現(xiàn)了這只動(dòng)物的年齡，但進(jìn)一步的DNA測(cè)試還沒(méi)有最終確定它屬于犬類。

“It’s normally relatively easy to tell the difference between the two,” says David Stanton, a researcher at the center.

該中心的研究員大衛(wèi)·斯坦頓說(shuō):“通常來(lái)說(shuō)，很容易就能分辨出兩者的區(qū)別。”

“We have a lot of data from it already, and with that amount of data, you’d expect to tell if it was one or the other. The fact that we can’t might suggest that it’s from a population that was ancestral to both — to dogs and wolves,” Stanton tells CNN.

“我們已經(jīng)從它那里獲得了大量數(shù)據(jù)，有了這么多數(shù)據(jù)，你就能知道是哪一個(gè)了。但事實(shí)上，我們不能認(rèn)定為它來(lái)自于哪一個(gè)祖先——狗或是狼。”斯坦頓告訴CNN。

For now, researchers have dubbed their discovery Dogor, the Yakut word for “friend.”

目前，研究人員將他們的發(fā)現(xiàn)命名為Dogor，雅庫(kù)特語(yǔ)中的“朋友”一詞。

Stanton explains that the period in which Dogor lived is “a very interesting time in terms of wolf and dog evolution.”

斯坦頓解釋道，從狼和狗的進(jìn)化來(lái)看，道格生活的時(shí)期是一個(gè)非常有趣的時(shí)期。

“We don’t know exactly when dogs were domesticated, but it may have been from about that time,” he adds. “We are interested in whether it is, in fact, a dog or a wolf, or perhaps it’s something halfway between the two.”

“我們不知道狗是什么時(shí)候被馴化的，但可能是從那個(gè)時(shí)候開始的，”他補(bǔ)充道。“我們感興趣的是它到底是狗還是狼，或者是介于兩者之間。”

Today’s pet pooch is thought to have been tamed from wolf breeds, though scientists can’t exactly pinpoint when that genetic branching took place. A 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications asserts that modern dogs were domesticated from a specific group of wolves who lived 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.

今天的寵物狗被認(rèn)為是從狼的品種馴化而來(lái)，盡管科學(xué)家們不能準(zhǔn)確地確定這種基因分支發(fā)生的時(shí)間。《自然通訊》(Nature Communications)雜志2017年發(fā)表的一項(xiàng)研究稱，現(xiàn)代狗是由生活在2萬(wàn)至4萬(wàn)年前的一群狼馴化而來(lái)的。

However, a study published in the journal Science the previous year found that dogs descended from two populations of gray wolves during the Paleolithic period, in both Asia and Europe.

然而，前一年發(fā)表在《科學(xué)》(Science)雜志上的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，狗是舊石器時(shí)代亞洲和歐洲兩個(gè)灰狼種群的后代。