Genetic information from a 35,000-year-old wolf bone found below a frozen cliff in Siberia is shedding new light on humankind’s long relationship with dogs, showing canine domestication may have occurred earlier than previously thought.
Today’s dogs, from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane, are believed to have descended from wild wolves domesticated by humans in prehistoric times, but when this took place has been a matter of debate.
Scientists said on Thursday they pieced together the genome of the wolf that lived on Russia’s Taimyr Peninsula and found that it belonged to a population that likely represented the most recent common ancestor between dogs and wolves.
Using this genetic information, they estimated that dog domestication occurred between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago.
Previous research based on genetic data from modern-day wolves and dogs had estimated that dogs were first domesticated 11,000 to 16,000 years ago based on an estimate of how quickly mutations occurred across the genome.
Swedish Museum of Natural History geneticist Love Dalén said the Taimyr wolf genome showed that the rate of mutation was only about half of what previously had been assumed, indicating domestication occurred much earlier.