Challenging previous research that suggested two domestication processes led to the modern dog, a new study led by an Indian-origin scientist says that all contemporary dogs have a common origin and emerged through a single domestication process of wolves 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
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Nature Communications:
- The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications.
- That are based on an analysis of the DNA of two prehistoric dogs from Germany.
- The researchers determined that their genomes were the probable ancestors of modern European dogs.
- Only last year were researchers able to sequence the genome of a 5,000-year-old dog using the latest paleogenomic techniques.
- The results of the study led the research team at the University of Oxford to suggest dogs were domesticated not once but twice.
- The research team also hypothesised.
- That an indigenous dogs stock domesticated in Europe was replaced by incoming migrants independently.
- Krishna Veeramah, Assistant Professor at the Stony Brook University, New York.
- Contrary to the results of this previous analysis.
- We found that our ancient dogs from the same time period were very similar to modern European dogs, including the majority of breed dogs people keep as pets.
- “This suggests that there was no mass Neolithic replacement that occurred on the continent and that there was likely only a single domestication process for the dogs observed in the fossil record from the Stone Age and that we also see and live with today.”
- Veeramah and his colleagues used the older 7,000-year-old dog.
- To narrow the timing of dog domestication to the 20,000 to 40,000 years ago range.
- They found evidence that the younger 4,700-year-old dog represents a mixture of European dogs.
- Also, a stock that resembles current Central Asian/Indian dogs.
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