Origin Of Dogs

[sandgrubber]

New Finding Puts Origins of Dogs in Middle East

By NICHOLAS WADE

Borrowing methods developed to study the genetics of human disease, researchers have concluded that dogs were probably first domesticated from wolves somewhere in the Middle East, in contrast to an earlier survey suggesting dogs originated in East Asia.

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The dingo was one of the breeds studied to determine where dogs were first domesticated from wolves.

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From Ancestral Wolf to Modern Dog

This finding puts the first known domestication — that of dogs — in the same place as the domestication of plants and other animals, and strengthens the link between the first animal to enter human society and the subsequent invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

A Middle Eastern origin for the dog also fits in better with the archaeological evidence, and has enabled geneticists to reconstruct the entire history of the dog, from the first association between wolves and hunter gatherers some 20,000 years ago to the creation by Victorian dog fanciers of many of today's breeds.

A research team led by Bridgett M. vonHoldt and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, has analyzed a large collection of wolf and dog genomes from around the world. Scanning for similar runs of DNA, the researchers found that the Middle East was where wolf and dog genomes were most similar, although there was another area of overlap between East Asian wolves and dogs. Wolves were probably first domesticated in the Middle East, but after dogs had spread to East Asia there was a crossbreeding that injected more wolf genes into the dog genome, the researchers conclude in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The archaeological evidence supports this idea, since some of the earliest dog remains have been found in the Middle East, dating from 12,000 years ago. The only earlier doglike remains occur in Belgium, at a site 31,000 years old, and in western Russia from 15,000 years ago.

. .. for full article and illustrations see

http://www.nytimes.c...nce/18dogs.html

a news treatment of the previous theory (2002), apparently bumped by this one, can be found at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2498669.stm

Edited July 17, 2011 by sandgrubber

[MalteseLuna]

WOW the times is really reporting on old news - that journal article was published in 2010 (mid year I think).

;)

[GeckoTree]

WOW the times is really reporting on old news - that journal article was published in 2010 (mid year I think).

;)

I hadn't seen that one before, but as in nearly everything, what is old will be new again at some point