JENNIFER BRODERICK
A new study on prehistoric DNA of dogs suggests that our
canine-loving friends were first domesticated in Europe. The new research,
based on a genetic analysis of ancient and modern dog and wolf samples, points
to a European origin at least 18,000 years ago.
The focus on ancient DNA provides "a new perspective on dog
origins," Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of
California at Los Angeles, said in a
"We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to
domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them,"
Wayne, the senior author of the research, said in a statement. "This
brings the genetic record into agreement with the archaeological record. Europe
is where the oldest dogs are found."
For the study in Science, the researchers studied 10 ancient
"wolf-like" animals and eight "dog-like" animals, mostly
from Europe. These animals were all more than 1,000 years old, most were
thousands of years old, and two were more than 30,000 years old. The
researchers also analyzed samples from 77 modern-day dogs, 49 wolves and four
coyotes. Then they grouped together the DNA signatures into an evolutionary
tree diagram.
The researchers compared genetic sequences from a wide range of
ancient animals - both dogs and wolves - with material taken from living
canines - again, from both dogs and wolves.
This analysis show that modern dogs are most similar to ancient
European wolves or dogs - not to any of the wolf groups from outside Europe, nor
even to modern European wolves (suggesting the link is with old European wolves
that are now extinct).
"The wolf is the first domesticated species and the only
large carnivore humans ever domesticated," Wayne said. "This always
seemed odd to me. Other wild species were domesticated in association with the
development of agriculture and then needed to exist in close proximity to
humans. This would be a difficult position for a large, aggressive predator.
But if domestication occurred in association with hunter-gatherers, one can
imagine wolves first taking advantage of the carcasses that humans left behind
- a natural role for any large carnivore - and then over time moving more
closely into the human niche through a co-evolutionary process."