Woman walking a fox Photo: Scott Bairstow/Alamy Stock Photo
People once kept foxes as pets, an Oxford study has shown study found.
An extinct species of fox, Dusicyon avus, was preserved by humans 1,500 years ago in Patagonia, according to scientists studying a burial site accidentally unearthed by miners.
>
Although researchers note, that they were not necessarily «pets», historical evidence suggests a «close relationship» between the animal and man.
Analysis of the bones showed that a fox was buried next to the man, and its diet was similar to humans, which, according to scientists, indicates «a close relationship between the two species.»
The fox species Dusicyon avus has disappeared. went extinct about 500 years ago, but lived in South America thousands of years before that. The continent has a rich diversity of canids, with currently 11 species.
The species, which weighs up to 15 kg, is thought to have likely gone extinct due to climate change, as well as the introduction of domestic dogs to the area.
At the site, which is located on the territory of modern Argentina, there were 21 people (18 adults, 2 teenagers, 1 child), as well as a fox.
«This is a very rare and unusual find,» the study said. Study author Dr Ophelie Lebrasseur from the University of Oxford, who led the study along with Dr Cynthia Abbona from CONICET, Argentina's main government agency for science and technology, told The Telegraph.
“The presence here of an almost complete skeleton suggests deliberate burial human, which, in our opinion, suggests a close connection with the hunter-gatherer society.
“Its diet resembled that of the humans buried at the site rather than that of wild canids, and this similarity in diet suggests that it was either fed by hunter-gatherers or fed on kitchen scraps.”
” Finally , no cut marks were found on any of the animal's bones, suggesting that the individual was not eaten.»
Dusicyon avus was previously thought to be extinct because interbreeding between the species and domestic dogs led to to infertile offspring and the death of the fox.
Fertile, not barren
But the study refutes this, as genetic analysis of the domestic fox's skull bones shows that it was likely able to breed with dogs since their genomes differ by only 3.4 percent, and so the hybrid offspring were likely fertile rather than sterile. as previously thought.
Radiocarbon dating of bones and teeth found at the Cañada Seca burial site showed them to be about 1,505 years old. Scientists say the species has never been found this far west or north before, and this study expands the extinct fox's range by hundreds of kilometers.
Scientists have not been able to understand exactly how the fox and people were buried, as much of the context was lost due to accidental damage caused by clay mining that discovered the site in the middle of the Atuel River valley.
“However «It is possible that the fox was deliberately inhumated in this burial, marking the first record of a complete skeleton of this fox species buried alongside humans,» the scientists wrote in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.
» Our study does not support the suggestion that hunter-gatherers domesticated foxes to keep them as pets,» Dr Lebrasseur added.
«Rather, we identified this specimen from this single site and found it to be very unique in the fact that his burial and his diet suggest that he may well have played a companion role to hunter-gatherer society.
“So it was a wild individual, but most likely tamed, although not domesticated.”
Свежие комментарии