Did Mesolithic People Prefer Foxes to Dogs as Pets?

Foxes may be regarded today in the United Kingdom by many people as vermin, particularly with the case recently of a fox attacking a baby.  Indeed, the traditional fox hunting scene of a fox being chased by a pack of dogs still adorns many a tea-towel and other such apparel, but evidence found in an archaeological dig in the Middle East country of Jordan suggests that at least one fox was man’s (or woman’s) best friend long before dogs became prominent.

Fox Bones Found in Mesolithic Grave

Foxes are members of the Canidae family, the same family as dogs (canines), they are generally omnivorous and usually no bigger than a Springer Spaniel, the Red Fox for example, (Vulpes vulpes).  Regarded as intelligent, cunning and resourceful animals, they are found on virtually every continent (having been introduced to Australia) and they are common subjects for folklore and country tales.

Mesolithic peoples may have preferred the fox to the dog as a pet, a new study in the online scientific journal PLoS One suggests.  Researchers examining graves and grave goods at a prehistoric burial ground in the country of Jordan have discovered a grave in which a fox was buried alongside a human.  Perhaps this was the household pet.

The research team (based at Cambridge University, UK) have postulated that this is evidence of some sort of emotional bond between human beings and foxes.  The fox may have been buried along side its master or mistress so that the two could travel to the afterlife together.

Fox Bones

Although, the bones may not be proof of an emotional link between a person and a fox, if people were domesticating foxes at the time the person was buried, it suggests that foxes were forming an association with people long before dogs came onto the scene.  The graves are located at Uyun-al-Hammam, in northern Jordan.  The site is approximately 16,500 years old and depicts a human culture that was becoming more sedentary, moving away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and becoming more involved with agriculture.  The fox/human grave is approximately 4,000 years older than the earliest human-dog burial and 7,000 years earlier than anything else similar found in Europe.

Studying the Burial Site

The study of the burial site, reveals a growing cultural sophistication, more closely associated with the later Neolithic age.  Foxes (the Red Fox) were common in that area of the Middle East in the Mesolithic (as they are today), perhaps they played a role in keeping man’s first grain harvests safe from rates and mice whilst it was in storage.  However, the relationship between mankind and foxes does not seem to have lasted, the more friendly and less timid dogs seem to have taken over sometime in the Neolithic.

A Diagram Showing the Layout of the Human/Fox Graves

Picture credit: PLoS One – Maher et al.

The picture shows a diagram of the grave area and highlighted areas with accompanying photographs providing more detail.  The site shows evidence of the grave being opened and the human body being relocated and buried close by.  The body of the fox was also removed from the first grave and reburied with the human.

Body of the Fox Reburied

Commenting on this, Dr Lisa Maher from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (Cambridge University) stated:

“The burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which predates any comparable example of animal domestication.  What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner.”

Dr Maher went onto add:

“Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human’s body was moved.  But because the link between fox and human had been significant, the fox was moved as well, so that the person, or people, would still be accompanied by it in the afterlife.”

Photographs of the Fox Skull from the Grave

Is the Fox Man’s Best Friend.

Picture credit: PLoS One – Maher et al.

The photographs show various views (lateral views, close up of lateral views and ventral view) of the prepared and conserved fox skull found at the Uyun-al-Hammam site.  The skulls of a number of canines were studied by the research team in order to identify the species and the skull/skeleton from the grave has been identified as a Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes).

It is interesting to think how things may have turned out for the foxes if we humans had not started domesticating chickens and other birds.  Foxes are renowned in many cultures for their ability to break into and cause havoc in chicken coups, perhaps as we became more successful at domesticating other animals so our relationship with the fox was doomed.

The scientific paper: “A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan)” by Lisa A. Maher, Jay T. Stock, Sarah Finney, James J. N. Heywood, Preston T. Miracle, Edward B. Banning published in PLoS One.

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Prehistoric Bird with Club-like Wings

Nature is full of examples of different types of organism that develop the same biological or anatomical characteristics as an adaptation to their environments.  For example, ichthyosaurs (and now possibly mosasaurs), with their tail-flukes that resemble those of dolphins.  The flying squirrel and the flying lizard, both accomplished gliders but not closely related.

Just occasionally, a fossil is found that throws up something so unusual and uncharacteristic that scientists are perplexed as to what their discovery could mean.  They have no benchmarks to work with.

One such instance of this has been reported in the scientific journal “The Proceedings of the Royal Society – Biology”.  A paper has just been published on the fossilised remains of a type of Ibis from the Caribbean island of Jamaica.

Xenicibis xympithecus

This extinct, flightless bird known only from Jamaica, apparently evolved banana-shaped clubs from its wings.  What these “clubs” were actually for remains open to speculation, but researchers have concluded that they may have been used in intraspecific conflicts, perhaps fights over nesting sites or mates.

This strange bird, was roughly the size of a chicken, it has been scientifically described as Xenicibis xympithecus.  The genus Xenicibis had been first described in 1977 and a number of bones ascribed to it from several Caribbean islands.  However, this new study has been based on much more complete remains found in caves sited at the southern end of Jamaica.  Evidence suggests that this bird was alive as recently as 10,000 years ago, and may have been driven to existence by man, the fate of so many flightless birds, the Dodo for example.

Commenting on this strange creature, researcher Nicholas Longrich, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Yale University stated:

“There is just nothing else out there like this in any other vertebrate.  Usually evolution tends to hit on the same designs over and over, and this is just something completely different, so as a biologist it’s sort of cool to find something and be able to say: Wow!  I haven’t seen that one before.

Distorted Hands and Block-like Fingers

The strangely distorted hands had short, block-like fingers, long palm bones, thicker than the bird’s femur and wrist joints that allowed the wings to swing rapidly back and forth like flails or clubs.

Longrich added:

“I sometimes compare these things to nunchucks, which I guess would make this a ninja bird, although perhaps a better analogy would be a pair of baseball bats – they were actively swung rather than moving passively like a flail.”

Evidence of broken wings in the fossil record, suggest these clubs were potent weapons in intraspecific combats.

At first, scientists thought that this was a deformity but as more fossils were found showing the same anatomical configuration it became clear that the club-like wings were an adaptation.  Their use as weapons to fight off predators has not been ruled out, as it seems that both males and females possessed these strange wings.

For models and replicas of extinct animals, take a look at the Mojo Fun range of figures: Mojo Fun Prehistoric and Extinct Models.

Why did the Mammals get Big after the Cretaceous Mass Extinction?

With the dinosaurs dead and gone, it was the mammals that took over the mega fauna roles in the Palaeogene and with the exception of the phorusrhacids in South America, the mammals went onto to dominate food chains and ecosystems across the planet.  However, the types of mammals that became the biggest plant-eaters and carnivores varied as the Cenozoic progressed.

The question remains, as to how the mammals, so long in the shadow of the Dinosauria, were able to diversify and dominate, leading to the evolution of animals many thousands the times heavier than their Cretaceous ancestors just twenty million years later.

The Class Mammalia, has ancient roots.  Many unique groups of small mammals evolved during the Mesozoic, but today there are only three main Orders, the monotremes (egg laying mammals), the marsupials (possums and wombats etc.) and the most successful Order to date – the placentals (bats, hoofed animals, tigers, dogs, whales and of course, ourselves).

Prehistoric Mammals

In a new study, published in the scientific journal “Science”, an international team of researchers have concluded that the mammals were able to exploit food resources and adapted to colder climatic conditions and this combination of factors led to them increasing in size.  Some of the largest mammals, for example, rivalled the dinosaurs in terms of bulk.  Indricotheres, ancient ancestors of modern rhinos, were perhaps the largest.  Weighing over 15 tonnes and standing nearly 5 metres high at the shoulder, these giant herbivores are known from Oligocene strata from the famous Hsanda Gol formation and other fossilferous strata of the Asian sub-continent.

A Scale Diagram of an Indricothere (Paraceratherium)

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The research project funded by a U.S. Foundation National Science grant brought together scientists from universities all over the world to track the mammalian fossil record and analyse how they diversified and grew bigger.

For models and replicas of prehistoric mammals: Models of Prehistoric Mammals.

Researcher Jessica Theodor of the University of Calgary (Canada) commented:

“When dinosaurs went extinct, maximum mammal size was between one and ten kilogrammes, in that size range.  But it did not take long for mammals to start growing after the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, leaving loads of vegetation for others to eat.”

She went on to add:

“Twenty-five million years later, we have mammals that are a thousand times bigger.”

The two year study, conducted by researchers from around the world, examined the mammalian fossil record in a bid to understand how the mammals became big.  With the dinosaurs around, the quick-metabolising mammals had to try to compete with larger reptilian rivals for food resources, the mammals were not able to compete.  With the mass extinction event, mammals took their opportunity and rapidly came to dominate.

The research team concluded that trends in mammalian growth were seen on all the continents, what was happening in Asia was also being mirrored in the Americas and Europe.

Researcher John Gittlemen of the University of Georgia stated:

“It includes information on the size of all mammals, living and fossil, from around the world.  The database is powerful and unique.”

An Extensive Database

Having compiled such an extensive database, examining large body bones and tooth fossils, both of which provide solid evidence of overall animal size, the researchers were able to draw conclusions regarding the science of growing big.

Jessica Theodor concluded:

“There is strong selection pressure for herbivores to get really big.  Being big protects you from predation because very large herbivores do not get preyed on very much.”

In addition, falling global temperatures over the later stages of the Palaeocene and the Eocene would have led to the evolution of bigger body sizes, as large animals are able to maintain a constant internal temperature more efficiently than smaller creatures.

Jessica added:

“Large mammals do not have to work so hard to stay warm, so cold climates tend to favour the evolution of large mammals.  More food would have been available to bigger mammals because their stomachs were larger and produced compounds that could break down tougher parts of trees and plants.”

Larger animals could accommodate a larger gut, permitting these creatures to specialise in different kinds of herbivory eating parts of plants that are not that nutritious.  Such animals could rely on gut bacteria to break down plant cellulose.

Interestingly, the scientists discovered that just because you are “top dog” one day or epoch, there is no guarantee that you are going to stay on top.

Reflecting on this finding, Theodor said:

“It was not the case that say, elephants get big and then elephants are always the biggest mammal [land living] on the planet.  There are times when it is giant rhinos, there are times when in South America it is all kinds of weird things including – believe it or not camels.”

Commenting on the study, a spokesperson for Everything Dinosaur stated:

“Camels are ruminants and being big permits them to have large guts to handle fibrous vegetation.  Today we think of camels as animals living in dry, arid environments, however, many extinct species were at home in forest habitats and grassland environments.”

The change in dominance implies that there is something fundamental about being a large mammal.  The research team have concluded that the “top dog” niche exists apart from who is filling it.  It is an open space into which some type of mammal will move.

This research suggests that in the future other types of mammal may grow large to take over from the Proboscidea (animals with trunks such as elephants) as the largest land living mammals.  Giant pigs, racoons, or horses perhaps?