Did Dogs Live in Costa Rica 12,000 Years Ago?
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA—The AFP reports that researcher Guillermo Vargas of the National Museum of Costa Rica re-examined a collection of 12,000-year-old animal bones unearthed in northeastern Costa Rica in the 1990s and identified the jaw of a dog. It had been previously thought that the jaw belonged to a coyote. Vargas explained that a coyote’s jaw has a different shape than a dog’s, and it has more pointed teeth. “The dog eats the leftovers from human food,” he said. “Its teeth are not so determinant in its survival.” And, he pointed out, coyotes didn’t arrive in Costa Rica until the twentieth century. The presence of a dog in Costa Rica 12,000 years ago therefore suggests people also lived there. “There have never been dogs without people,” said National Autonomous University of Mexico biologist Raúl Valadez. Researchers from Oxford University will now attempt to extract a DNA sample from the bone and carbon date it. To read about Indigenous dogs in the New World, go to "The American Canine Family Tree."
https://www.archaeology.org/news/10080-211013-costa-rica-dog
= new reply since forum marked as read
I don't know; I wasn't there. But I'd go along with the scientists.
This Costa Rican Paradise Shelters Over 1,000 Stray Dogs
A photographer documents scenes from Territorio De Zaguates, a converted farm in the Santa Bárbara mountains that’s giving abandoned dogs a second chance
Jennifer Billock
Travel Correspondent
March 6, 2018
Scenes from Territorio De Zaguates. Dan Giannopoulos
Imagine a relaxing walk through the mountains and rainforests of Costa Rica, hearing the chirping birds, the buzzing insects—and the happy yips of hundreds of dogs trailing behind you. Most dog people would love just that, and now they can experience it first hand at a sanctuary for stray dogs in Costa Rica.
Territorio De Zaguates is a no-kill shelter, homing stray or abandoned dogs from all over Costa Rica. The shelter itself was founded in 2005 in the home of Lya Battle and Alvaro Samut outside San Jose. But their house was too small to accommodate all the dogs, and around 2008, the couple moved them to 378 acres of farmland that had been left to Battle when her grandfather died.
The National Animal Health Service in Costa Rica estimates the country has about a million stray dogs out on the streets. As a result, there are new dogs coming to the shelter all the time. Workers and volunteers often go out and pick up strays that locals have told them about or taken in. Other dogs are brought in by owners who no longer want or can provide for their pets. Every dog is accepted to the shelter; to date, no animal has been turned away.
Now, more than 1,000 dogs roam the countryside of the Costa Rican estate. They go on daily walks in the mountains and eat roughly 858 pounds of food per day. They’re bathed and treated on-site for illness or injury (though more intense cases go to a specialist vet in San Jose). And most importantly, they’re given a better quality of life than they’d experience on the streets.
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/these-photos-transport-you-dogs-central-american-paradise-180968018/
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