Mikkel Sinding did a joint (cotutelle) PhD at the Natural History Museums Copenhagen and Oslo. Øystein and Lutz were his supervisors on the Norwegian side. Mikkel defended his thesis entitled “Never Cry Wolf-The origin and genomic history of the indigenous Greenland dogs and wolves” in December 2017. Since then, Mikkel has continuously published the results of his thesis as well as the results of international research teams his thesis contributed to.

The publication of the paper entitled ” Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition” as cover story of the journal Science with Mikkel as first author and Øystein and Lutz as co-authors certainly marked a highlight in 2020. In short, the analyses of 10 modern sled dogs and an ancient wolf revealed their genetic relationships with other modern dogs. Sled dogs represent an ancient lineage going back at least 9500 years, and wolves bred with the ancestors of sled dogs and precontact American dogs.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1495/tab-article-info

The featured picture was modified to include the copyright, the used license can be found here (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Text in the teaser: On December 13th we will show you some research on dogs and wolves. Come and visit us again.

Picture in the teaser: