Study shows cat-like dogs evolved due to climate change

Ancestors of dogs living in North America 40 million years ago looked like cats. Earth’s climate and has been fluctuating for millions of years.

Since canines and other predators appear to have evolved with climate change over the last 40 million years, then they likely will continue to do so in response to the human-created climate change underway now, according to the researchers.

Over forty million years ago, the wetter and warmer climate meant there existed extensive, dense forests over a great deal of what are the central plains in the U.S.

Eventually, the middle part of North America dried out such that we got the grassy plains we know today. The dog species at the time were very small animals. But predators evolved too, as Janis and lead study author Borja Figueirdo, now at Spain’s Universidad de Málaga, determined from close inspection of the fossil record.

“It’s reinforcing the idea that predators may be as directly sensitive to climate and habitat as herbivores”, said study co-author Christine Janis, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. She went on to add that “Although this seems logical, it hadn’t been demonstrated before”.

They saw clear patterns: At the same time that climate change was opening up the vegetation, dogs were evolving from ambushers to pursuit-pounce predators like modern coyotes or foxes – and ultimately to those dogged, follow-a-caribou-for-a-whole-day pursuers like wolves in the high latitudes.

Over the time, the area grew more cold and dry, and the forests thinned out giving way to vast plains in many places.

The biome lent itself to predators that were smaller and could ambush by surprising their prey while they were passing by, which describes the wild dogs native to that period.

Older canine species tended to have paws that could swivel inwards or down to help them grab and wrestle prey, a similar structure can still be seen in the limbs of modern cats.

“The elbow is a really good proxy for what carnivores are doing with their forelimbs, which tells their entire locomotion repertoire”, Janis explained.

The long stride and the signature pounce of modern dog species wasn’t practical until their was open space. The researchers believe their findings also have implications for the future effects of current man-made climate change on evolution.

Professor Janis also theorized that members of the Canidae family did not develop the ability to run because prey such as antelope and deer were much faster than what they were used to hunting, but simply because they now had the space to run.