Ancient DNA from the Asiatic Wild Dog (Cuon alpinus) from Europe

The Asiatic wild dog (Cuon alpinus), restricted today largely to South and Southeast Asia, was widespread throughout Eurasia even reached North America during the Pleistocene. Like many other species, it suffered from a huge range loss towards end of Pleistocene went extinct in most its former distribution. fossil record dhole is scattered identification fossils can be complicated by an overlap size high morphological similarity between dholes canid species. We generated almost complete mitochondrial genomes for six putative Europe. By using three lines evidence, i.e., number reads mapping various genomes, evaluation quantification evenness along reference phylogenetic analysis, we were able identify two out samples as dhole, whereas four represent wolf fossils. This highlights contribution genetic data make when trying species affiliation specimens. ancient sequences are highly divergent compared modern sequences, but scarcity comparison impedes more extensive analysis.