The Natural And Cultural History Of The Dingo: A 3D Geometric Morphometric Investigation

Abstract

The dingo is a primitive dog endemic to Australia. Dingoes currently reside in the wild, but some previously lived with Australian Aboriginal people as tame companions. Many aspects of the dingo’s identity are controversial, in part because its natural and cultural history on the continent remain unclear. Of particular contention are the questions of where and when the dingo came from, whether its phenotype has changed over time, and whether it was ever domesticated. Here, I investigate these issues through a morphological study of modern, palaeontological and archaeological dingo remains, employing a focus on 3D geometric morphometric assessment of the cranium and mandible, supplemented by traditional linear metric analyses of body mass, shoulder height, and tooth size. A large degree of geographic variation was observed in the morphology of modern dingoes, suggestive of correlation with broad clines in ancestry and environmental factors, and the impacts of recent European dog admixture. Morphological separation is also observed in palaeontological dingoes from eastern and western Australia, indicating a split of relatively deep antiquity. Differences between corresponding populations of ancient and recent dingoes are nearly non-existent on the Nullarbor, moderate in the Southeast and substantial in the Southwest. These changes likely reflect ongoing integration into Australian ecosystems, European dog admixture, and recent lethal baiting. Archaeological dingo morphologies are highly variable, and reflect a diverse cultural history for the species. Some individuals are entirely indistinguishable from modern-day conspecifics; others are different only on the basis of size. A few individuals from the southern Murray-Darling Basin, however, exhibit radically altered morphologies that are not observed whatsoever in modern or palaeontological dingoes, but more closely resemble modern East Asian and New Guinean dogs. It is speculated that these may represent a now-extinct ancestral form of dingo, one which was initially maintained through human association, but was gradually lost as the species increasingly adapted to living in the wild, and through colonial disruptions of traditional Aboriginal lifeways. Similar forms may have persisted in and around Aboriginal communities until the late colonial period