{"id":4279,"date":"2015-08-18T22:39:17","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T02:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4279"},"modified":"2015-08-24T11:50:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T15:50:59","slug":"dogs-evolved-with-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/dogs-evolved-with-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogs evolved with climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4280\" style=\"width: 574px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hesperocyon-and-Sunkahetanka-pencil-1024x363.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4280\" class=\"wp-image-4280\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hesperocyon-and-Sunkahetanka-pencil-1024x363.jpg\" alt=\"Two extinct species of the canid family, Hesperocyon (left) and Sunkahetanka (right) show the change in canid hunting styles as the species evolved due to climate change.\" width=\"564\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hesperocyon-and-Sunkahetanka-pencil-1024x363.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hesperocyon-and-Sunkahetanka-pencil-1024x363-300x106.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 564px) 100vw, 564px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4280\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two extinct species of the canid family, Hesperocyon (left) and Sunkahetanka (right) show the change in canid hunting styles as the species evolved due to climate change.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The evolution of North American dogs shows that evolution can be a direct consequence of climate change,\u00a0and is not always associated with an \u201carms race\u201d between\u00a0ancient dogs and their prey.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers studied fossil elbows and teeth of 32 species of dogs from 40 million years to two million years ago, the same period when climate changed the North American landscape from wooded forests to open grasslands.<\/p>\n<p>The elbows, an indicator of what carnivores are doing with their forearms, lost their range of motion and ancient dogs lost the ability to grapple with their food but became specialized for distance running and endurance. The qualities that would be necessary to capture prey by hiding under folliage and pouncing evolved to a capacity to chase prey over open grasslands.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/ncomms\/2015\/150818\/ncomms8976\/full\/ncomms8976.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0<em>Nature Communications\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>August 18<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0author<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>\u00a0B. Figueirido, Departamento de Ecolog\u00eda y Geolog\u00eda, Universidad de M\u00e1laga, Spain<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The evolution of North American dogs shows that evolution can be a direct consequence of climate change,\u00a0and is not always associated with an \u201carms race\u201d between\u00a0ancient dogs and their prey. Researchers studied fossil elbows and teeth of 32 species of dogs from 40 million years to two million years ago, the same period when climate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[170,113,2449,2373,917],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biodiversity","tag-biology","tag-canines","tag-dogs","tag-evolution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Hesperocyon-and-Sunkahetanka-pencil-1024x363.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-171","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4281,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4279\/revisions\/4281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}