Move over, Rover. Foxes were once humans’ best friends

Evidence from a Patagonian burial dating back about 1,500 years hints at a close connection between a hunter-gatherer and the extinct fox species Dusicyon avus.

In an ancient grave in what’s now northwestern Argentina, a person was buried with a canine companion — but this animal friend wasn’t a dog, according to new research. The burial held the skeleton of a type of canid that may have once competed with dogs for human affection: a fox. Humans and dogs have a long history. The relationship between the two species is tens of thousands of years old. However, a fresh analysis of evidence from a Patagonian burial dating back about 1,500 years hints at a similar close connection between a hunter-gatherer in southern South America and the large extinct fox species Dusicyon avus. Archaeologists originally uncovered the near-complete D. avus skeleton buried alongside a human at Cañada Seca, a site in northern Patagonia, in 1991. There were no cut marks on the bones, so the fox hadn’t been eaten, said Dr. Ophélie Lebrasseur, a researcher with the Wellcome Trust Palaeogenomics and Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology in the United Kingdom. An in-depth analysis of ancient DNA and radiocarbon dating confirmed the fox’s species and age, and examination of collagen in the fox’s remains revealed that it ate the same food that this group of humans did. Along with the skeleton’s placement in the grave, the animal’s diet suggested that the fox was tame and may have been kept as a pet, scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence from burial sites on other continents indicating that individual foxes were tamed by humans and shared a connection based on companionship. D. avus lived from the Pleistocene Epoch (around 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) into the Holocene, becoming extinct about 500 years ago. It was roughly the size of a modern German shepherd but far less bulky, weighing up to 33 pounds (15 kilograms).