How European colonization completely wiped out dogs in America

Before Europeans started colonising the Americas around 500 years ago, the land was populated by native human inhabitants and the animals living alongside them.

Now, exhaustive DNA studies have unearthed the troubling history of dogs in North America – and their fate of extinction at the hands of European colonists.

Colonial devastation bestowed upon native humans of the Americas is well-documented; but evidence about dogs’ lives is less known.