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Apprehensive_Age_384 t1_itoye7e wrote

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21016700

Apparently when a wave of people from the Indian subcontinent arrived!

Part of the Aboriginal genepool is Indian, according to the study. 4000 years ago Indian people seem to have arrived in Australia, and they brought dingos with them apparently.

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Aspy343 t1_itpe4iw wrote

The islands above Australia (Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, etc.) were all connected to Australia recently enough that humans and dogs could just walk there.

Indians may have arrived 4000 years ago but other people arrived WAY before that. At the very minimum 50,000 years ago, but that's just the oldest we know about, so probably much longer than that.

Genetic studies show that Dingos arrived around 10,000 years ago, so a long time after humans.

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[deleted] OP t1_itqolmf wrote

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Jusfiq t1_itzjpm4 wrote

> That's why tigers lived free in Sumatra, but not in Australia.

Sumatra and Australia have indeed never been connected since before the Ice Age. Sumatra is part of Sunda Shelf and Australia is part of Sahul Shelf. As part of Sahul Shelf however, Australia and the island of New Guinea was connected. Part of New Guinea today is territory of Indonesia.

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[deleted] OP t1_itsmc3k wrote

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Jusfiq t1_itzjts3 wrote

>...you couldn’t walk to Australia, it remained isolated.

Australia was connected to New Guinea, part of the island is territory of Indonesia.

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ZekeDarwin t1_itzti95 wrote

New Guinea was not connected to the mainland, so you couldn’t walk to Australia (or New Guinea)

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Rather_Dashing t1_itpzh6p wrote

The stuff on Indians mixing with Aboriginal Australians is interesting, the stuff on dingos doesnt seem at all conclusive though, wonder what other dingo researchers would say on those points. Seems more likely that the dingo came from Indonesia/PNG.

This is the extent of the evidence on dingos in that paper btw

>However, the dingo also first appears in the fossil record at this time and must have come from outside Australia (46). Although dingo mtDNA appears to have a SE Asian origin (47), morphologically, the dingo most closely resembles Indian dogs (46).

Genetics trumps morphology every time. Morphologically dingos are more similar to Tasmanian tigers than anything else on Australia, but origin wise that means nothing at all.

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Downhome27 t1_itqiv0y wrote

Does that mean they have found dingo fossil outside of Australia? Seems to me if they have only found remains in Australia you could assume the dingo originated there? It brings about all kinds of weird creatures. I don’t know if it would be a stretch to say a species could change drastically over there in a relatively short period; especially if it’s ancestor came from that part of Asia.

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ZekeDarwin t1_itsmibh wrote

The dingo is genetically an offshoot of the domestic dog. Populations became wild again after being domesticated.

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