Collins (1798) reported HM781-36B dingoes in the Sydney region as ‘two colours, the one red with some white about it, and the other quite black’. Explorer Mitchell (1839) reported a ‘small black native dog’ in northern central New South Wales in 1832. Historical descriptions of dingoes from Western Australia during the period 1826–1890,

compiled by Abbott (2008), include red, yellow, black, black and white, white, tan and tawny animals. Mitochondrial variation at the control region is posited to be low in dingoes, with over 50% of animals sampled in previous studies having a control region haplotype, A29, with all other samples only differing by one base pair (Savolainen et al., 2004; Oskarsson et al., 2011). This haplotype was shared with dogs from East Asia, South-East Asian islands and Arctic America

(Savolainen et al., 2004). Similarly, only two Y-chromosome haplotypes (H3 and H60) were this website found in dingoes, the first shared with south-east Asian dogs and the second derived from Taiwanese haplotypes, shared only with the New Guinea singing dog (Ardalan et al., 2012). More recently, dingoes have been found to exhibit a unique chromosome haplogroup characterized by one single-nucleotide polymorphism and 14 single tandem repeats (Sacks et al., 2013). We have provided a morphological description of the dingo based on specimens and information that are unlikely to have been influenced by hybridization with domestic dogs. By providing a description for

the dingo, our study provides a benchmark against which the identities of canids can be assessed. Using our description, it is now possible to classify canids in Australia as dingo-like based on morphological grounds. Diagnosing what constitutes Dynein a dingo remains difficult due to the overlap in morphological characters with domestic dogs, localized adaptations in dingoes and morphological variation through time (Radford et al., 2012). Identification of diagnostic morphological characters is also difficult, especially when there is more variation within the domestic dogs in shape and size than in the whole Canidae (Drake & Klingenberg, 2010). Our morphological analyses showed that there is considerable overlap between domestic dogs and dingoes for most morphological characters. This was particularly the case for some Australian breeds, such as the Australian cattle dog, which are thought to have dingo ancestry (Arnstein, Cohen & Meyer, 1964). A similar degree of overlap in shape exists between North American wolves and closely related husky dogs (Clutton-Brock, Kitchener & Lynch, 1994). Consistent with previous studies, a broad cranium, widening of the palate and shortening of the rostrum were characteristics separating domestic dogs from dingoes (Newsome et al., 1980; Newsome & Corbett, 1982). Previous studies have regarded widening of the palate and shortening of the rostrum as indicators of domestication in dogs (Clutton-Brock, 2012).