Older skeletal remains, from the Madura Cave on the Nullarbor Plain have been dated to approximately 3,450 years. Yet other remains date to around 3,000 years (Mulvaney, 1999: 258-260). Previous claims of dingo remains being as old as 7,000 to 8,000 years have been retracted and dingo researcher, Laurie Corbett, believes that any new finds of ancient dingo remains will not be dated to more than 4,000 to 5,000 years (Private Communication, 6.5.05).

Corbett's expectation is supported by recent DNA analysis conducted by an international team of researchers, including geneticist Alan Wilton of the University of New South Wales . By comparing the genetic makeup of 676 dogs from all continents, 38 Eurasian wolves, 211 Australian dingoes and 19 pre-European archaeological dog samples, the researchers set out to determine the origin of the Australian dingo and its time of arrival on the Australian continent (Savolainen et al,. 2004). By measuring the ‘genetic distance’, or the degree of genetic variation amongst Australian dingoes, the researchers concluded a time of arrival of approximately 5,000 years ago.

The research also indicated an East Asian origin for the dingo. This conclusion is significant because it discounts an alternative, commonly held view, that the dingo is descended from Indian ‘pariah’ dogs or Indian wolves. It was also concluded that dingoes arrived as either a very small founding population,

“…theoretically as few as a single pregnant female...” or a
“…group of dogs that had radically lost genetic variation through one or several severe bottlenecks on their way form the Asian mainland through Island Southeast Asia”(Savolainen et al., 2004: 12390).

After arrival, it appears that there was not any further significant introduction of dogs to Australia , prior to the arrival of Europeans. Upon European arrival, therefore, the dingo represented “…a unique isolate of early undifferentiated dogs” (Savolainen, 2004: 12390). In other words, the dingo is, pretty much, what all dogs looked like 5,000 years ago.

Although this research concludes a time of arrival that is reasonably consistent with the fossil record, it is nevertheless worth noting that the estimation of 5,000 years is dependent upon an assumption about the rate of mutation among dingoes during their time in Australia . If this assumption is wrong, then, the authors concede, the time of arrival may be estimated to be much longer … possibly up to 10,800 years ago (Savolainen et al., 2004: 12389).

One thing appears certain. Because no evidence of the dingo has been found in Tasmania , there is consensus that the dingo did not arrive on the Australian continent until after the separation of Tasmania from the Australian mainland, due to rising sea levels about 10,000 years ago. Although there is no evidence to support the view, the possibility of an arrival time well before 5,000 ago is not yet disproved. Indeed, it is possible that the dingo arrived when the Australian continent was still attached to New Guinea which separated from Australia about 8,000 to 8,500 years ago. Future evidence may either support or discount this possibility.

Mulvaney, J. and Kamminga, J. Prehistory of Australia , Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999

Corbett, L. The Dingo in Australia and Asia , Marleston, JB Books, 2001

Savolainen, P., Leitner, T., Wilton , A. Matiso-Smith, E. and Lundeberg, J. ‘A detailed picture of the origin of the Australian dingo, obtained from the study of mitochondrial DNA’, in PNAS , vol. 101, no. 33, Aug.17, 2004