Ancient DNA Including Wolves Preserved in the Permafrost Suggests Dog Domestication, Diversification Started 40,000 Years Ago

Ancient DNA, which includes that of wolves preserved in the permafrost of tens of thousands of years, has shed some light on how wild wolves turned out to be some of the men's best non-human friends.

What's described as the "beloved pooch snoring on one's couch or sticking a snout under his arm during meal time," came from quite a wilder origin, a ScienceAlert report specified.

At some point, dogs separated from gray wolves under the guidelines of domestication to turn into the "diverse fuzzbutts" filling the homes and hearts with such joy at present.

Through this work, geneticist Anders Bergstrom of the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom explained, that they have greatly increased the number of "sequenced ancient wolf genomes," enabling them to develop a detailed picture of wolf ancestry over time, which includes around the time of the origins of dogs.

Dog Domestication Started Thousands of Years Ago

The geneticist also said that by attempting to place the dog piece into this picture, they discovered that dogs derive ancestry from at least two separate populations of wolves, specifically, an eastern source that contributed to all dogs, and another more westerly source that contributed to some dogs.

All domestic dogs at present, from the "teensiest chihuahua to the mightiest mastiff," come from the same species known as Canis familiaris.

More so, all are descended from wolf ancestry shared with the gray wolf or Canis lupus today. However, the timeline is unclear, not to mention hotly debated. Some researchers have controversially suggested that the process started more than 1000,000 years ago.

Recent work by Bergstrom and his team included DNA of over 30 dogs dated between 100 and 32,000 years ago.

Specifically, they discovered that dogs have diversified by 11,000 years back, so it needed to have occurred before then. Generally, it accepted that domestication and thus diversification started sometime between 40,000 and 20,000 years back, and possibly more than once, in different parts of the globe.

Learning More About the Ancient Wolves

The study published in Nature also enabled the research team to learn more about ancient wolves and their evolution. Specifically, they were able to trace a gene variant that had turned from being rare to nearly ubiquitous, over the period of approximately 10,000 years.

The study also allowed the team to learn more about ancient wolves and their evolution. The mutation is affecting a gene known as IFT88, involved in the head and jaw bones' development, and remains present in nearly every wolf and dog today.

According to the team, they still don't know why such a mutation turned very common, although it may have to do with natural selection, probably the types of available prey made changes wrought by the mutation specifically beneficial. It is possible too, that the gene does something that's not known about, and the mutation provided an unidentified benefit.

How Dog Species Move and Change Over Time

Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist, and senior author, also from Crick said this is the first time researchers have directly tracked natural selection in a huge animal over a time scale of 100,000 years, seeing the evolution play out in actual time, instead of attempting to restructure it from DNA today.

The study findings also suggest that such temporarily wide-ranging whole-genome research can provide with much more detailed understanding of how species are moving and changing over time, a similar Emourly report said.

The next phase of this study is to attempt to further narrow down which wolves were the modern dogs' ancestors. The researchers are expanding their investigation into regions worldwide not covered by such an assessment.

Related information about the origin of dogs is shown on Stockholm University's YouTube video below:

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