“Dog is man’s best friend” may be an ancient cliché, but when that friendship began is a longstanding question among scientists. A study led by a University of Arizona researcher is one step closer to an answer to how Indigenous people in the Americas interacted with early dogs and wolves.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances and based on archaeological remains from Alaska, shows that people and the ancestors of today’s dogs began forming close relationships as early as 12,000 years ago—about 2,000 years earlier than previously recorded in the Americas.

“We now have evidence that canids and people had close relationships earlier than we knew they did in the Americas,” said lead study author François Lanoë, an assistant research professor in the U of A School of Anthropology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

“People like me who are interested in the peopling of the Americas are very interested in knowing if those first Americans came with dogs,” Lanoë added. “Until you find those animals in archaeological sites, we can speculate about it, but it’s hard to prove one way or another. So, this is a significant contribution.”

Lanoë and his colleagues unearthed a tibia, or lower-leg bone, of an adult canine in 2018 at a longstanding archaeological site in Alaska called Swan Point, about 70 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Radiocarbon dating showed that the canine was alive about 12,000 years ago, near the end of the Ice Age.

Another excavation by the researchers in June 2023—of an 8,100-year-old canine jawbone at a nearby site called Hollembaek Hill, south of Delta Junction—also shows signs of possible domestication.

The smoking gun? A belly of fish

Chemical analyses of both bones found substantial contributions from salmon proteins, meaning the canine had regularly eaten the fish. This was not typical of canines in the area during that time, as they hunted land animals almost exclusively. The most likely explanation for salmon showing up in the animal’s diet? Dependence on humans.

“This is the smoking gun because they’re not really going after salmon in the wild,” said study co-author Ben Potter, an archaeologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The researchers are confident that the Swan Point canine helps establish the earliest known close relationships between humans and canines in the Americas. But it’s too early to say whether the discovery is the earliest domesticated dog in the Americas.

That is why the study is valuable, Potter said, “It asks the existential question, what is a dog?”

The Swan Point and Hollembaek Hill specimens may be too old to be genetically related to other known, more recent dog populations, Lanoë said.

“Behaviorally, they seem to be like dogs, as they ate salmon provided by people,” Lanoë said, “but genetically, they’re not related to anything we know.”

He noted that they could have been tamed wolves rather than fully domesticated dogs.

‘We still had our companions’

The study represents another chapter in a longstanding partnership with tribal communities in Alaska’s Tanana Valley, where archaeologists have worked since the 1930s, said study co-author Josh Reuther, an archaeologist with the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

Researchers regularly present their plans to the Healy Lake Village Council, which represents the Mendas Cha’ag people indigenous to the area, before undertaking studies, including this one. The council also authorized the genetic testing of the study’s new specimens.

Evelynn Combs, a Healy Lake member, grew up in the Tanana Valley, exploring dig sites as a kid and taking in what she learned from archaeologists. She’s known Lanoë, Potter and Reuther since she was a teenager. Now an archaeologist herself, Combs works for the tribe’s cultural preservation office.

“It is little—but it is profound—to get the proper permission and to respect those who live on that land,” Combs said.

Healy Lake members, Combs said, have long considered their dogs to be mystic companions. Today, nearly every resident in her village, she said, is closely bonded to one dog. Combs spent her childhood exploring her village alongside Rosebud, a Labrador retriever mix.

“I really like the idea that, in the record, however long ago, it is a repeatable cultural experience that I have this relationship and this level of love with my dog,” she said.

“I know that throughout history, these relationships have always been present. I really love that we can look at the record and see that, thousands of years ago, we still had our companions.”

ARIZONA — The Arizona Cardinals have announced the following practice squad moves:

“The Arizona Cardinals Football Club today announced that the team has activated offensive lineman Jackson Barton from the practice squad injured reserve list and has released linebacker Ronnie Perkins from the practice squad.”

The Perkins move was first reported by Aaron Wilson yesterday, which you can read more about here.

Barton started a game for Arizona at right tackle this season with Jonah Williams and Kelvin Beachum out, though he was injured with a toe injury and was soon replaced by Charlie Heck.

Barton first entered the league as a seventh-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft and has spent time with the Colts, Chiefs (where he won the Super Bowl in 2019), Giants and Raiders before signing with Arizona in April of 2023.

The Cardinals are 6-6 after losing their last two and play host to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 14, setting the stage for a big matchup at State Farm Stadium that could determine NFC playoff seedings down the road.

This will be the second time in three weeks Arizona will face Seattle, though head coach Jonathan Gannon says the familiarity and game prep doesn’t make things easier.

“No, we go back and go through our normal process, so yes, your point is correct about seeing some of those games and studying some of the stuff that we study,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“You’re seeing it a second time, but there are no shortcuts to the creative process. There are no shortcuts just because you played them two weeks ago (and that goes) to how you prepare, how you do game plans and what you teach and all that. Truly, we do start from scratch.

“I talked to the team today about a divisional opponent that you just played two weeks ago. Some of those things that came up in the game, we have to make the correct decisions and be smart about things that we’re doing within the game because emotions will be high. It’s a divisional opponent. You just played them two weeks ago, so there is an opportunity for some carryover that we have to make sure is in our favor.”

A British band kicking off its West Coast tour in San Francisco this week hit a bump in the road when a gunman robbed the members’ tour van at a Vallejo gas station.

But as consummate professionals, the group said itwill continue its tour.

“Just been robbed at gun point 10 minutes into the US tour,” the band, Sports Team, wrote in an Instagram post. “Man runs in saying some guys are smashing into a van. Ran out to try to stop it and find masked guys ransacking the van.”

The post-bunk band is set to release a new album in February and has tour stops in San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland later this month. The band played the first show of its tour in San Francisco on Monday and made the drive to its next gig in Sacramento. But the members stopped first at a Vallejo gas station Starbucks on Tuesday, where the tour gods were not smiling down on them.

One of the masked men pulled out a gun when the band members tried to stop the robbery, according to the band’s post, which included a video of the episode. In the video, taken around 9 a.m., a group of masked individuals pull items out of the band’s white tour van. Someone screams for the band members to seek refuge inside the Starbucks.

When the band called police to report the robbery they were told to “submit an online report,” according to the band’s post. The members are originally from Cambridge, England.

“Lost a lot of personal gear, but they didn’t get the instruments so driving on to Sacramento to play tonight,” the band wrote. “They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about motorways. In all seriousness pretty shocking how resigned everyone seemed to be to it. ‘It happens’. 9am at some petrol station Starbucks. Wild.”

The Vallejo Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The indie band, which was nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2020, is set to play in Los Angeles on Dec. 11 at El Cid and in Palm Springs on Dec. 15.