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Ovodov et al. / PLOS ONE
The skull of a 33,000-year-old canid was found in a cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.
By Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
A canine skull found in the Altai Mountains of Siberia is more closely related to modern domestic dogs than to wolves, a new DNA analysis reveals.
The findings could indicate that dogs were domesticated around 33,000 years ago. The point at which wolves made the transition to man's best friend is hotly contested, though dogs were well-established in human societies by about 10,000 years ago. Dogs and humans were buried together in Germany about 14,000 years ago, a strong hint of domestication, but genetic studies have pinpointed the origin of dog domestication in both China and the Middle East.
The Altai specimen, a well-preserved skull, represents one of the two oldest possible domestic dogs ever found. Another possible domestic dog fossil, dated to approximately 36,000 years ago, was found in Goyet Cave in Belgium.
Anatomical examinations of these skulls suggest they are more doglike than wolflike. To confirm, researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and their colleagues drilled a tiny amount of bone from the Altai dog's incisor and jaw, and analyzed its DNA. They conducted all of the work in an isolated lab and used extra precautions to prevent contamination, as ancient DNA is extremely fragile.
The researchers then compared the genetic sequences from the Altai specimen with sequences from 72 modern dogs of 70 different breeds, 30 wolves, four coyotes and 35 prehistoric canid species from the Americas. [10 Breeds: What Your Dog Says About You]
They found that the Altai canid is more closely related to modern domestic dogs than to modern wolves, as its skull shape had previously suggested. That means that the Altai canid was an ancient dog, not an ancient wolf — though it had likely diverged from the wolf line relatively recently, the researchers report Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
If the Altai dog was really domesticated, it would push back the origin of today's house pets more than 15,000 years and move the earliest domestication out of the Middle East or East Asia, as previous studies have suggested. However, the analysis was limited to only a portion of the genome, the researchers wrote.
"Additional discoveries of ancient doglike remains are essential for further narrowing the time and region of origin for the domestic dog," they said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas @sipappas. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
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Authors of "Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid From Altai as a Primitive Dog" include Anna Druzhkova, Olaf Thalmann, Vladimir A. Trifonov, Jennifer A. Leonard, Nadezhda V. Vorobieva, Nikolai D. Ovodov, Alexander S. Graphodatsky and Robert K. Wayne.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience. All rights reserved.
Leave a Comment:
Impossible. Preacher BillyBob said God made the world 6000 years ago. So the DNA must mean 3300 years ago.
No, the apparent DNA results are a deliberate ruse by god to test our faith. She's very sneaky that way, you know. Anyway, we all know that man domesticated dinosaurs first. I remember watching a documentary about that as a kid. I think it was called "The Flintstones."
Huh??! Dogs were domesticated 33,000 years ago and man goes back some 15,000 years.....
Domesticated means that man had an influence on dogs! So they've decided man was around 15,000 years ago but dog was domesticated by man 33,000 years ago.
Who was the idiot who wrote this article?!! What kind of stupidity does an editor let some novice writer use to make A SHAM OUT OF REPORTED NEWS?
Completely stupid in it's inception of fact because no terms were reconciled! What a bunch of idiots!
Ergo, dog domesticated man! Viola!
Who decided "man" only goes back 15,000 years?
I think you are trying to be clever here, but it is not working. Homo Sapiens gained anatomical moderninity 200,000 years ago and behavioral moderninity 50,000 years ago. They began to farm and group in specialized communities about 15,000 years ago. I think this is what you are after. Anyway, everyone knows that women domesticated men, dogs are just riding on our coattails and eating our table scraps!
After women semi-domesticated man she had him create the poodle. My suspicion is the man with the sissiest looking poodle as a gift was more successful with the mating rituals.
Dennis-387683
Perhaps you didn't know that the poodle is originally a hunting dog that men brought with them on their long walks thru the woods together. That's OK tho. There's nothing wrong with bromance (since you posit a poodle is part of mating rituals).
Excuse me, private faith schools looking for public funds tell me that the universe is probably less than 10,000 years old.
33K years ago? The ark wasn't even built then or, um, galaxies and time.
"If the Altai dog was really domesticated, it would push back the origin of today's house pets more than 15,000 years and move the earliest domestication out of the Middle East or East Asia, as previous studies have suggested."
Actually, that is not true, especially when one considers how quickly the domain of a domesticated, or even semi-domesticated species can expand. The fact that a fossil is discovered in Siberia does not exclude the possibility that the fossil derives from a lineage originating in the Middle East or East Asia. In addition, if the 36K-year-old specimen from Belgium is also a domesticated dog, then a theory of origin would have to explain both the 33K-year-old Altai sample and the 36K-year-old Belgian sample. That does not necessarily exclude either the Middle East or East Asia. 3,000 years is a long time for events associated with human domestication. 3,000 ago, the iron age had only recently begun and the city of Rome had not yet been founded. Many species have had their ranges expanded during that time.