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Dear Eve: As to your problem with distinguishing dogs from wolves -- please write me back and I will send you my research team's latest results in the form of several .pdf's of published papers. It turns out that dogs and wolves are easy to distinguish: just measure the length of the superior carnassial tooth. If it's greater than 22 mm, there's a better than 90% chance that it's a wolf. Of course, since you only have a mandible, you'll have to extrapolate/estimate. You absolutely cannot distinguish dog from wolf on the basis of gaps in the teeth. Neither on the basis of a sinusoidal zygomatic suture. These are myths that have arisen from guessing and/or small sample sizes. Forget using DNA if what you are after is a technique that is "easy and cheap". Further, dogs and wolves belong to the same species and they often interbreed. There is a large body of highly contentious research on this and you're just going to have to read the papers -- start with Baxter, Clarke, Bartowiecz, Crockford, Benecke, Bokonyi, Boyko, Braidwood & Reed, Clutton-Brock, Muller, Drake et al., Ostrander, Larsen, Harcourt, Morey, Ovodov, Parker, Sablin, Shigehara, Tedford, Teichert, VanAsch, VanGelder, Verginelli, VonHoldt, Zeder. Most of these are in the bibliographies to the .pdf's I offered to send to you. -- Deb Bennett > Dear all, > > I have two identification related questions. I have uploaded the pictures > in a dropbox folder: > https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9dvr285j3zo3af7/AAAPYEgFSQTVRcVHDlM2k3eMa?dl=0 > > 1. The small bone - I can't even figure out to which class this creature > could belong to. At least it doesn't look like a mammal nor like a fish... > > 2. The canid mandible - I've heard that based on the position or gaps > between the teeth it would be possible to distinguish wolves and dogs. I > haven't encountered any certain literature on that yet. I also must say > that canids are fairly unfamiliar to me, thus the trivial questions.... > This particular mandible also seems to be missing some teeth. Would it be > possible to say whether it's a dog or wolf? > > And continuing with dogs and wolves - I've also understood that it's quite > impossible to distinguish them genetically - at least in case of > fragmented > aDNA. There could be some markers or positions in the mtDNA out there, but > probably it would be tricky to try those, because there might be both > temporal and geographical differences in populations that would make any > results difficult to interpret in Estonian context. Am I right? Or have I > understood wrong? The question is driven from a need to (easily and > cheaply) distinguish few Early Modern Period archaeological specimens of > wolves/dogs. Does anyone have any experience with genetic differentiation > of ancient wolves/dogs or would there be some papers to suggest? > > Thank you and kind regards, > -- > Dr Eve Rannamäe > Marie Skłodowska-Curie Experienced Researcher > BioArCh, Environment Building > University of York > Wentworth Way, Heslington > York, YO10 5DD > United Kingdom >