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The dingo is a wild dog endemic to Australia with enigmatic origins. Dingoes are one of two remaining unadmixed populations of an early East Asian dog lineage, the other being wild dogs from the New Guinea highlands, but morphological connections between these canid groups have long proved elusive. Here, we investigate this issue through a morphometric study of ancient dingo remains found at Lake Mungo and Lake Milkengay, in western New South Wales. Direct accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates from an ancient Lake Mungo dingo demonstrate that dingoes with a considerably smaller build than the predominant modern morphotype were present in semi-arid southeastern Australia c.3000-3300 calBP. 3D geometric morphometric analysis of a near-complete Mungo cranium finds closest links to East Asian and New Guinean dogs, providing the first morphological evidence of links between early dingoes and their northern relatives. This ancient type is no longer extant within the range of modern dingo variability, but populations from nearby southeastern Australia show a closer resemblance than those to the north and west. Our results reaffirm prior characterisations of regional variability in dingo phenotype as not exclusively derived from recent domestic dog hybridisation but as having an earlier precedent, and suggest further that the dingo's phenotype has changed over time., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The dingo, also known as the Australian native dog, was introduced in the late Holocene. Dingoes were primarily wild animals but a number resided in Aboriginal people's camps. Traditionally, these individuals were taken from wild litters before weaning and raised by Aboriginal people. It is generally believed that these dingoes were not directly provided for, and upon sexual maturity, returned to reproduce in the wild. However, some died while in the company of people and, were buried in occupation sites. This Australian practice parallels the burial of domestic dogs in many regions of the Asia-Pacific and beyond but has attracted very little research. We explore the historical and archaeological evidence for dingo burial, examining its different forms, chronological and geographic distribution, and cultural significance. Dingoes were usually buried in the same manner as Aboriginal community members and often in areas used for human burial, sometimes alongside people. This practice probably occurred from the time of their introduction until soon after European colonisation. We present a case study of dingo burials from Curracurrang Rockshelter (NSW) which provides insights into the lives of ancient tame dingoes, and suggests that domestication and genetic continuity between successive camp-dwelling generations may have occurred prior to European contact., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Koungoulos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: One difficulty in testing the hypothesis that the Australasian dingo is a functional intermediate between wild wolves and domesticated breed dogs is that there is no reference specimen. Here we link a high-quality de novo long-read chromosomal assembly with epigenetic footprints and morphology to describe the Alpine dingo female named Cooinda. It was critical to establish an Alpine dingo reference because this ecotype occurs throughout coastal eastern Australia where the first drawings and descriptions were completed., Findings: We generated a high-quality chromosome-level reference genome assembly (Canfam_ADS) using a combination of Pacific Bioscience, Oxford Nanopore, 10X Genomics, Bionano, and Hi-C technologies. Compared to the previously published Desert dingo assembly, there are large structural rearrangements on chromosomes 11, 16, 25, and 26. Phylogenetic analyses of chromosomal data from Cooinda the Alpine dingo and 9 previously published de novo canine assemblies show dingoes are monophyletic and basal to domestic dogs. Network analyses show that the mitochondrial DNA genome clusters within the southeastern lineage, as expected for an Alpine dingo. Comparison of regulatory regions identified 2 differentially methylated regions within glucagon receptor GCGR and histone deacetylase HDAC4 genes that are unmethylated in the Alpine dingo genome but hypermethylated in the Desert dingo. Morphologic data, comprising geometric morphometric assessment of cranial morphology, place dingo Cooinda within population-level variation for Alpine dingoes. Magnetic resonance imaging of brain tissue shows she had a larger cranial capacity than a similar-sized domestic dog., Conclusions: These combined data support the hypothesis that the dingo Cooinda fits the spectrum of genetic and morphologic characteristics typical of the Alpine ecotype. We propose that she be considered the archetype specimen for future research investigating the evolutionary history, morphology, physiology, and ecology of dingoes. The female has been taxidermically prepared and is now at the Australian Museum, Sydney., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press GigaScience.)