Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - Now It's Frozen Wolf Cubs From 4,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Creationism Refuted - Now It's Frozen Wolf Cubs From 4,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

14,000-year-old frozen wolf cubs recovered from permafrost at the Syalakh site, Northern Siberia

Famous Ice Age ‘puppies’ likely wolf cubs and not dogs, study shows - News and events, University of York

The mountain of evidence that creationists must ignore to maintain their belief that Earth is a mere 6,000–10,000 years old—because it says so in a book of Bronze Age mythology—just got a little bigger. A new analysis of the DNA of two frozen canid cubs found in Siberian permafrost confirms they were wolves, not early domesticated dogs as once speculated. The cubs, discovered near the village of Tumat in northern Siberia, are around 14,000 years old and genetically similar to modern wolves.

An analysis of DNA from their stomach contents reveals a mixed diet of meat and plant matter, consistent with the diets of contemporary wolves. Remarkably, some of the meat—specifically skin—came from a woolly rhinoceros, likely a calf, as adult rhinos would have been far too large for wolves to hunt. An earlier study had identified black fur in the cubs, prompting speculation that they might be early domesticated dogs, since melanism is commonly associated with dogs but not typically seen in wolves. However, further genomic analysis showed that these cubs belonged to a now-extinct wolf population that was not ancestral to domestic dogs. This suggests the black fur mutation may have been limited to that specific lineage, contributing nothing to the modern dog gene pool.

The puppies were found at the Syalakh site, the first in 2011 and the second in 2015. The site also contains mammoth bones showing signs of burning and processing by humans. This initially led to speculation that the cubs might have been tame or semi-domesticated wolves associated with early humans. However, that hypothesis can now be ruled out based on the genetic evidence. It is believed that the cubs died when a landslide trapped them in their den shortly after their final meal.

How the wolf cubs came to be fed on the skin of a woolly rhinoceros remains uncertain, but one plausible explanation is that it was scavenged from a kill made by humans.

What is the current thinking on the time and place of domestication of dogs from wolf ancestors? The domestication of dogs from wolf ancestors is one of the most studied and debated topics in archaeology, genetics, and anthropology. While the exact time and place remain uncertain, there is broad agreement on several key points, with a few competing hypotheses still under active investigation.

Current Consensus and Key Points

Timeframe

Earliest likely date: Between 20,000 and 23,000 years ago (Late Pleistocene).
Possible earlier evidence: Some disputed claims suggest domestication could have started as early as 30,000–40,000 years ago, but these are controversial and based largely on morphological interpretations rather than genetic data.

Place

No single domestication site is universally accepted. Several competing hypotheses exist:

Eurasia (broadly): Most genetic studies point to domestication somewhere in Eurasia, particularly northern or central Eurasia, which includes regions like modern-day Siberia, Mongolia, or Kazakhstan.
Western Eurasia (Europe): Some early archaeological dog remains from Belgium, Germany, and the Czech Republic date to ~14,000–16,000 years ago.
East Asia: Mitochondrial DNA studies once suggested southern China as a possible origin, though this is less favoured in more recent genome-wide analyses.
Dual origin hypothesis: One now largely abandoned theory proposed that dogs may have been domesticated independently in both East and West Eurasia and that the two populations later merged. Newer genomic evidence tends to favour a single origin with subsequent population structure and admixture.

Mechanism of Domestication

Likely a mutualistic relationship between humans and wolves:

Wolves that scavenged near human campsites may have become tamer over generations.
Humans may have favoured and tolerated wolves that were less aggressive and more sociable.
This process likely occurred over many generations, leading to a self-domestication scenario.

Genetic Evidence

Modern dogs share a common ancestor with modern wolves but are not descended from any living wolf population.
Ancient wolf populations that gave rise to dogs are extinct.
DNA studies show that domesticated dogs diverged from wolves long before the advent of agriculture, ruling out earlier assumptions that domestication only happened in Neolithic farming societies.

Archaeological Evidence

The oldest unambiguous dog remains come from sites dated to ~14,000–15,000 years ago (e.g. Bonn-Oberkassel in Germany).
Some earlier remains (~30,000 years ago, like at Goyet Cave in Belgium) show features that are dog-like but are considered ambiguous—possibly early stages of domestication or simply morphologically variable wolves.

Summary

When: Most likely between 20,000 and 23,000 years ago.
Where: Likely in northern or central Eurasia, but exact location remains debated.
How: Through a gradual, mutualistic process where wolves began scavenging near human camps, leading to selection for tameness and sociability.
Why: Dogs would have provided early humans with protection, companionship, hunting assistance, and possibly warmth (e.g. sleeping next to people in cold climates).

The analysis, led by researchers from the University of York, UK, is the subject of a paper just published in Quaternary Research and is discussed in a University of York news release.

Famous Ice Age ‘puppies’ likely wolf cubs and not dogs, study shows
New analysis of the remains of two ‘puppies’ dating back more than 14,000 years ago has shown that they are most likely wolves, and not related to domestic dogs, as previously suggested.
The genetic analysis also proved that the cubs were sisters at the age of around two months, and like modern day wolves had a mixed diet of meat and plants. Researchers, however, were surprised to see evidence of a woolly rhinoceros as part of their last meals, as this would have been a considerably large animal for a wolf to hunt. The ‘Tumat Puppies’ are two remarkably well-preserved puppy remains found in northern Siberia, about 40 km from Tumat, the nearest village. One was found in 2011 and the other in 2015 at what’s now called the Syalakh site. The puppies were discovered in layers of soil, preserved in ice, alongside the bones of woolly mammoths, some of which showed signs of having been burned and processed by humans. This led scientists to wonder if the site was once used by humans to butcher mammoths, and whether the puppies might have had a connection to people, possibly as early dogs or tamed wolves that hung around humans for food. There are no visible injuries or signs of attack to the cubs, and so they were likely to have been inside an underground den, resting after their meal, until a potential landslide collapsed their home, trapping the cubs inside.

A new study, led by the University of York, however, has shown that, based on genetic data from the animals’ gut contents and other chemical ‘fingerprints’ found in their bones, teeth and tissue, that the way they were living, what they were eating, and the environment they existed in, points to the puppies being wolf cubs and not early domesticated dogs.

Both were already eating solid food, including woolly rhinoceros meat and, in one case, a small bird called a wagtail. However, their bodies still showed signs of having nursed, meaning they were likely still getting milk from their mother too.

Despite being found near human-modified mammoth bones, there was no evidence of the cubs consuming mammoth, but the piece of woolly rhinoceros skin found in the stomach of one of the cubs had not been fully digested, suggesting they died not long after their last meal.

Last meal

It is thought that the woolly rhinoceros may have been a young calf, rather than a fully grown adult, and likely hunted by the adult pack and fed to the cubs, but even if this was the case, a young woolly rhinoceros would have been considerably bigger than prey modern-day wolves typically hunt.

This has led researchers to think that these Pleistocene wolves may have been somewhat bigger than the wolves of today. Previous DNA testing suggests that the cubs most likely belonged to a wolf population that eventually died out and didn’t lead to today’s domestic dogs.

It was incredible to find two sisters from this era so well preserved, but even more incredible that we can now tell so much of their story, down to the last meal that they ate.

Anne Kathrine Wiborg Runge, first author
Department of Archaeology
University of York, York, UK.

Black fur

The original hypothesis that the Tumat Puppies were dogs is also based on their black fur colour, which was believed to have been a mutation only present in dogs, but the Tumat Puppies challenge that hypothesis as they are not related to modern dogs.

Whilst many will be disappointed that these animals are almost certainly wolves and not early domesticated dogs, they have helped us get closer to understanding the environment at the time, how these animals lived, and how remarkably similar wolves from more than 14,000 years ago are to modern day wolves. It also means that the mystery of how dogs evolved into the domestic pet we know today deepens, as one of our clues - the black fur colour - may have been a red herring given its presence in wolf cubs from a population that is not related to domestic dogs.

Anne Kathrine Wiborg Runge.

Tiny fossilised plant remains were discovered in the cubs’ stomachs, indicating that they lived in a diverse environment with a variety of plants and animals to consume, including prairie grasses, leaves from the shrub genus Dryas and willow twigs. This suggests the landscape they inhabited included different types of habitats that could support rich and varied ecosystems.

Varied diet

We know grey wolves have been around as a species for hundreds of thousands of years based on skeletal remains from palaeontological sites, and researchers have done DNA testing of some of those remains to understand how the population changed over time. The soft tissues preserved in the Tumat Puppies, however, gives us access to other ways of investigating wolves and their evolutionary line. We can see that their diets were varied, consisting of both animal meat and plant life, much like that of modern wolves, and we have an insight into their breeding behaviours too. The pair were sisters and likely being reared in a den and cared for by their pack - all common characteristics of breeding and raising of offspring in wolves today.

Today, litters are often larger than two, and it is possible that the Tumat Puppies had siblings that escaped their fate. There may also be more cubs hidden in the permafrost or lost to erosion. The hunting of an animal as large as a woolly rhinoceros, even a baby one, suggests that these wolves are perhaps bigger than the wolves we see today, but still consistent in many ways, because wolves still tend to hunt easy prey while some of the pack is engaged in cub rearing.

Dr Nathan Wales, corresponding author
Department of Archaeology
University of York, York, UK.

The research findings, however, means that the hunt for the oldest dog - and their place of origin - is still on.

The research, in collaboration with researchers based in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Russia and Sweden is published in the journal Quaternary Research.

Publication:

Runge AKW, Niemann J, Germonpré M, et al.
Multifaceted analysis reveals diet and kinship of Late Pleistocene ‘Tumat Puppies.’
Quaternary Research. Published online 2025:1-15. doi:10.1017/qua.2025.10

Sadly, the main body of the paper is behind an expensive paywall, but we have the abstract:

Abstract
Distinguishing early domesticates from their wild progenitors presents a significant obstacle for understanding human-mediated effects in the past. The origin of dogs is particularly controversial because potential early dog remains often lack corroborating evidence that can provide secure links between proposed dog remains and human activity. The Tumat Puppies, two permafrost-preserved Late Pleistocene canids, have been hypothesized to have been littermates and early domesticates due to a physical association with putatively butchered mammoth bones. Through a combination of osteometry, stable isotope analysis, plant macrofossil analysis, and genomic and metagenomic analyses, this study exploits the unique properties of the naturally mummified Tumat Puppies to examine their familial relationship and to determine whether dietary information links them to human activities. The multifaceted analysis reveals that the 14,965–14,046 cal yr BP Tumat Puppies were littermates who inhabited a dry and relatively mild environment with heterogeneous vegetation and consumed a diverse diet, including woolly rhinoceros in their final days. However, because there is no evidence of mammoth consumption, these data do not establish a link between the canids and ancient humans.

Runge AKW, Niemann J, Germonpré M, et al.
Multifaceted analysis reveals diet and kinship of Late Pleistocene ‘Tumat Puppies.’
Quaternary Research. Published online 2025:1-15. doi:10.1017/qua.2025.10

© 2025 Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Quaternary Research Center.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The discovery and analysis of the Tumat wolf cubs adds another valuable piece to the complex puzzle of dog domestication. Although initially thought to be early domestic dogs due to their black fur—a trait long associated with domesticated animals—the genetic evidence makes it clear that these animals were part of an extinct wolf population, not ancestral to modern dogs. This finding reinforces the growing view that domestication was not a single, linear event but rather a drawn-out, regionally varied process with many false starts and dead ends. Some wolf lineages may have developed traits conducive to domestication—such as altered coat colours or proximity to humans—only to disappear from the gene pool without contributing to the modern dog.

Far from simplifying the story of how dogs came to live alongside humans, the Tumat cubs complicate it, reminding us that domestication was likely a dynamic, multi-stage process with contributions from various populations over time. This challenges earlier models that tried to pinpoint a single origin point or a neatly defined timeline. Instead, we now see dog domestication as a mosaic of genetic, behavioural, and ecological interactions spread across millennia. The black fur mutation, once thought to be exclusive to dogs, likely arose independently in wild wolves, further illustrating how convergent traits can mislead when taken out of genomic context.

For creationists, however, this presents a fundamental problem. According to young-Earth creationist claims, all animals—including domestic dogs and their wild ancestors—must have been created in their current forms within the last 6,000–10,000 years. The genetic divergence between modern dogs and wolves, the presence of extinct lineages like the Tumat cubs, and the clear evidence of evolutionary processes such as mutation and selection—all documented in DNA preserved for 14,000 years—flatly contradict this narrative. These cubs represent a snapshot from deep time, preserved in permafrost, offering not just a challenge to creationist chronology but to the very notion that species are immutable and divinely fixed. Evolution, not special creation, is what makes sense of their story.

And of course there is the questions for creationists for which I can never get a sensible answer: if God created animals for the benefit of mankind, as the Bible claims, why have almost all our domestic animals, including dogs, had to be modified, sometimes radically, from wild ancestors? Did God not know what we would need or how we would use them? And why did he endow certain parts of the world, such as Africa, with species that have proved impossible to domesticate?

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