Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History Dogs

386 Pages·2010·11.33 MB·English

by  Xiaoming/ Tedford

DOGS

DOGS THEIR FOSSIL RELATIVES AND
EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
XIAOMING WANG + RICHARD H. TEDFORD | MAURICIO
ANTÓN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2008 Columbia University Press Illustrations copyright © 2008 Mauricio Antón
Paperback edition, 2010
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-50943-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wang, Xiaoming, 1957– Dogs : their fossil relatives and evolutionary history / Xiaoming Wang and
Richard H. Tedford ; illustrations by Mauricio Antón.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-13528-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-13529-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-231-50943-5 (e-book) 1. Dogs. 2. Canis, Fossil. 3. Dogs—Evolution.
I. Tedford, Richard H. II. Antón, Mauricio. III. Title.

QL737.C22W36 2008
599.77’2—DC22
2007052328
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
BOOK DESIGN by VIN DANG + JACKET DESIGN by MARTIN HINZE
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1 Methods of Study and the Place of Dogs in Nature
2 The Origin of Canids and Other Doglike Carnivorous Mammals
3 Diversity: Who Is Who in the Dog Family
4 Anatomy and Function: How the Parts Work
5 Hunting and Social Activity
6 Changing Environments and Canid Evolution
7 Going Places: Braving New Worlds
8 Domestic Dogs

APPENDIX 1: Canid Species and Classification
APPENDIX 2: Phylogenetic Tree of the Family Canidae
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
INDEX
PREFACE
THE LONG ASSOCIATION OF HUMANS and the domestic dog has attracted
considerable interest in the biology and natural history of the Canidae
(dog family), among both specialists and the general public. Several
recent events have converged to inspire further interest in canids. New
discoveries of early domestic dogs living in Israel and Germany more
than 14,000 years ago push back the fossil record and provide tantalizing
evidence of initial interactions between early humans and their first
domestic animal. Meanwhile, molecular studies indicate that China, not
Europe or the Middle East, may have been the center of first
domestication. Moreover, humans’ fascination with large predators such
as wolves and hunting dogs has continued to draw public attention to a
variety of issues ranging from predatory behavior to ecology and
conservation. The conservation and reintroduction of gray wolves in
Europe and North America and of red wolves in the southeastern United
States have promoted public debate regarding the need to protect large
predators in order to achieve a balanced ecological community.
Against this background of sustained public interest in everything about
dogs, the unparalleled Frick Collection (American Museum of Natural
History) of North American Cenozoic canids has been the subject of
three monographs by Xiaoming Wang (curator of Vertebrate
Paleontology), Richard Tedford (curator emeritus of Vertebrate
Paleontology), and Beryl Taylor (curator of the Frick Collection) (Wang
1994; Wang, Tedford, and Taylor 1999; Tedford, Wang, and Taylor in
press). The wealth of information provided in these monographs reveals
a vast array of extinct canids in North America, the continent of their
origin, and their subsequent expansion to the Old World about 5 to 7
million years ago (Ma) and to South America around 3 Ma. These
immigration events ultimately helped to make canids one of the most
widely spread living carnivores in the world and the dominant predators
on some continents. This book attempts to capture the excitement of
recent advances in our understanding of the natural history of this family
of carnivorans. The book is richly illustrated, both to provide an
unprecedented visual reference for the specialists and to make it
accessible and interesting to a wide nontechnical audience.
The family Canidae was the earliest group that still has extant
members to arise within the order Carnivora. During their history of more
than 40 million years, canids have also achieved a longevity and diversity
unrivaled by any other group of carnivores. Their success is also
exemplified by a worldwide distribution and achievement of top predator
status in modern North and South America, Australia, and northern
Eurasia—only in Africa are they less dominant among large predators. It
is argued that the propensity for canids to form large, social hunting
groups and the associated development of their brain were crucially
important in the domestication process—humans learned to form a
mutually beneficial relationship with such an intelligent carnivoran that
was preadapted to life among a different species. The importance of the
domestication of various animals in early human societies cannot be
overestimated, and it may have been first inspired by the domestication
of dogs.
The evolutionary history of canids is a history of successive radiations
(rapid expansions of diversity within a group of organisms, often in
response to environmental changes or new resources) repeatedly
occupying a broad spectrum of niches, ranging from large, pursuit
predators to small omnivores and possibly even to herbivores. Three
such radiations were first recognized by Richard Tedford (1978), each
represented by a distinct subfamily. Two archaic subfamilies,
Hesperocyoninae and Borophaginae, thrived in the middle to late
Cenozoic from about 40 to 2 Ma. All extant canids belong to the final
radiation, the subfamily Caninae, which achieved its present diversity
only in the past few million years.
Previous diversities of canids were intimately related to environmental
changes during the past 40 million years. Large, wolflike pursuit
predators were in particular the direct consequence of the opening up of
the landscape. A worldwide change from a warm and humid climate to an
increasingly colder and drier climate resulted in large-scale
transformation of forested environments to open grasslands worldwide.
These changes were reflected in the terrestrial vertebrate community by
an increasing cursoriality (the ability to run fast and for a long time)
among predators and prey. This greater ability to run is clearly reflected
in the fossil history of canids, which shows increasingly erect standing
postures, progressively lengthened limb bones, and restricted
movements of the joints.
Humans’ fascination with canids is derived from two main sources: our
love affair with our dogs and our reverence of their top predator status in
much of the world. Such a high interest in a group of mammals is
generally rare and offers a great opportunity to engage the public in
paleontology, functional morphology, evolution, and behavioral ecology.