Man's Best Friend: New Study Deciphers Evolution of Relationship Between Humans and Dogs

Much of the diversity seen in modern dog populations was already present around the time the last Ice Age had ended 11,000 years ago, a global study of ancient DNA revealed Thursday. Pontus Skoglund of Crick’s Ancient Genomics laboratory, the paper’s senior author, said: “Some of the variation you see between dogs walking down the street today originated in the Ice Age. “By the end of this period, dogs were already widespread across the northern hemisphere.” He added this implied that the diversity arose far earlier, “way back in time, during the hunter gatherer Stone Age, the Paleolithic, way before agriculture.” When and where dogs first diverged from wolves is a contentious matter — analyses of genetic data indicates a window of roughly 25,000-40,000 years ago. The scientists found that all dogs probably share a common ancestry “from a single ancient, now-extinct wolf population,” with limited gene flow from wolves since domestication but substantial dog-to-wolf gene flow.