Mystery of Dog Evolution Solved
From: Roger Greenway, ENN.com
How did modern dogs
evolve from wolves or other predecessor canines? Scientists have long thought
that modern dogs evolved from wild wolves that became accustomed to human
interaction and then were deliberately bred by early humans as pets.
Part of the ancient
mystery of the makeup of the modern Western dog has been solved by a team led
by researchers at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary
Medicine.
Several thousand years
after dogs originated in the Middle East and Europe, some of them moved south
with ancient farmers, distancing themselves from native wolf populations and
developing a distinct genetic profile that is now reflected in today’s canines.
Considerable
archaeological evidence indicates that the first dogs appeared about 14,000
years ago in Europe and the Middle East, while dogs did not appear in Southeast
Asia until about 7,000 years later. Scientists have been puzzled, though,
because growing genetic evidence suggests that modern Western dogs, including
modern European dogs, are derived from a Southeast Asian population of dogs
that spread throughout the world.
The problem: If dogs
originated in Europe, why does genetic evidence suggest that modern European
dogs are originally from Southeast Asia? Sacks and his team think they’ve found
the answer.
"Data from our
study indicate that about 6,000 to 9,000 years ago, during what is known as the
Neolithic age, ancient farmers brought dogs south of the Yangtze River, which
runs west to east across what is now China," Sacks said.
"While dogs in
other parts of Eurasia continued to readily interbreed with wolves, the dogs
that moved into Southeast Asia no longer lived near wolves, and so they
developed a totally different evolutionary trajectory, influenced by the
agriculture of Southeast Asia," he said. "Those ancient dogs
apparently underwent a significant evolutionary transformation in southern
China that enabled them to demographically dominate and largely replace earlier
western forms."
Read more at University of
California.