Dogs Became Man's Best Friend Far Earlier Than Previously Thought

Our connection with dogs may go back as much as 27,000 to 40,000 years. Scientists have uncovered an ancient Taimyr wolf bone that reveals a bit more about our relationship with our canine companions.

Earlier genome-based estimates suggested that ancestors of modern-day dogs diverged from wolves no more than 16,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. However, the genome from this latest specimen has been radiocarbon dated to 35,000 years ago. This means that the Taimyr wolf represents the most recent common ancestor of modern dogs and wolves.

"Dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than is generally believed," said Love Dalen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The only other explanation is that there was a major divergence between two wolf populations at that time, and one of these populations subsequently gave rise to all modern wolves."

In this case, the new findings are based on a small piece of bone picked up during an expedition to the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia. Only after a genetic test did the researchers realize that the bone fragment belonged to a wolf. Then, the scientists radiocarbon dated the bone and found that the piece of bone wasn't modern, but ancient.

"The power of DNA can provide direct evidence that a Siberian Husky you see walking down the street shares ancestry with a wolf that roamed Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago," said Pontus Skoglund, first author of the new study. "This wolf lived just a few thousand years after Neanderthals disappeared from Europe and modern humans started populating Europe and Asia.

It's possible that the wolf was one that followed human populations and wasn't domesticated. Either way, this specimen is the oldest yet discovered, and may just be the common ancestor of dogs and wolves.

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

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