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Anders Bergström

@anders-bergstrom.bsky.social
619 followers 461 following 21 posts

Research in genomics, evolution, biodiversity, ancient DNA. Group leader at University of East Anglia, previously postdoc at The Francis Crick Institute, PhD at Wellcome Sanger Institute

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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
We find an influx of Southwest Asian dog ancestry into Europe with agriculture, but the magnitude is smaller than in humans: only up to ~50% replacement in dogs. This suggests that the dogs from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies contributed substantially to the Neolithic farmer dog populations.
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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
We also studied the impact the arrival of agriculture had on Europe’s dogs. We know that incoming farmers from Southwest Asia replaced 80-90% of the ancestry of humans in Europe. Did the same thing happen to dogs? Image from the Skateholm Mesolithic site in Southern Sweden, credit: Lars Larsson.
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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
In a 2022 paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), we discovered ‘dual ancestry’ — dogs derive ancestry from one eastern wolf progenitor, and a second more westerly one. How do these pre-Neolithic European dogs fit into this? We find they have predominantly or only eastern wolf progenitor ancestry.
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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
The oldest dog is 14,200 years old, from Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland. This maxilla has long been one of the most iconic likely Paleolithic dog specimens, and we now confirm genetically that it is indeed a dog. Image © Cantonal Archaeological Service (KASH) of Schaffhausen, photo: Ivan Ivic.
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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
We analysed 216 canid remains, mostly from pre-Neolithic European contexts. To improve DNA recovery, we developed a genome-wide capture approach targeting 500,000 SNPs. We were able to obtain enough DNA to determine dog-vs-wolf ancestry for 2/3rds of the remains.
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Anders Bergström @anders-bergstrom.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Out today is our paper 'Genomic history of early dogs in Europe', in which we uncover the identity of the dogs that lived in Europe before agriculture—during the Paleolithic & Mesolithic periods: doi.org/10.1038/s415.... A thread ⬇️ (10) @biouea.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social
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