US EditionDog Diversity Emerged 11,000 Years Ago, Study Finds
- On November 13, 2025, the team reported much of dog morphological diversity emerged nearly 11,000 years ago, including a distinctive shortened snout and widened face in fossils from northwest Russia.
- Researchers found the movement of domestic dogs often coincided with human migrations across Eastern Eurasia, with hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists carrying distinct dog populations regionally.
- Using 643 skulls, the team applied geometric morphometrics and sequenced 17 newly sequenced ancient dog genomes plus 57 ancient and 160 modern dog genomes from archaeological specimens dated between 9,700 and 870 years.
- The study challenges the idea that Victorian kennel clubs alone created modern diversity, showing deep prehistoric variation while extreme skull shapes like pugs are absent in early records.
- Yet researchers say the exact timing, location and reasons for initial domestication remain unresolved and call for more specimens from underrepresented regions such as central and south-west Asia.
39 Articles
39 Articles
If you, like many people, have a lazy, whimsical dog who likes to be curled up on the couch, you will be surprised to know that your pet's ancestors were ferocious predators.Now, an important study reveals that the transformation of the wolf into a domestic dog began in the middle of the Stone Age, much earlier than was believed. “When you see a Chihuahua, you are seeing a wolf who has been living with humans for so long, that it ended up modifi…
Humans and dogs had already spread together in Eurasia at least 11,000 years ago. This is shown by a new study based on genome analyses. Among the first dogs in Eurasian society were specimens that were closely related to today's Siberian Huskys. Scientists from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich sequenced and analyzed together with international support the genomes of 17 old dogs from Siberia, East Asia and the Central Asian steppe…
As a species, dogs are incredibly diverse, encompassing animals as different as the Shih Tzu, the Shar Pei and the Shetland Shepherd. This explosion of canine forms has traditionally been attributed to the Victorian era, when dog enthusiasts created a wide range of standardized breeds and began to raise in mass specimens that met very varied physical standards. Now, a new analysis of canine skulls of the last 50,000 years suggests that even the …
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