This is a red wolf puppy in 2009. (Via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.0)

But what was Dogor, who lived (briefly) around the middle of the last ice age?

According to boffins this summer, work at 38 institutions and 9 ancient DNA labs in 16 countries has confirmed that Dogor was a wolf.

Sure, they’ll tell you that these vast resources were dedicated to Dogor merely to take advantage of an amazing opportunity to study natural selection in the past.

But I think it was really because this was a puppy — and because of that adorable little 20,000-year-old nose.

Or maybe just the fact that human researchers and wolf pups go together like peanut butter and jelly. ❤