Genomic and archaeological evidence suggest a dual origin of domestic dogs!

Our latest dog domestication paper is out in Science. A huge congratulations to our team and collaborators who have worked hard to make this happen!

Here is the abstract:

The geographic and temporal origins of dogs remain controversial. We generated genetic sequences from 59 ancient dogs and a complete (28x) genome of a late Neolithic dog (dated to ~4800 calendar years before the present) from Ireland. Our analyses revealed a deep split separating modern East Asian and Western Eurasian dogs. Surprisingly, the date of this divergence (~14,000 to 6400 years ago) occurs commensurate with, or several millennia after, the first appearance of dogs in Europe and East Asia. Additional analyses of ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA revealed a sharp discontinuity in haplotype frequencies in Europe. Combined, these results suggest that dogs may have been domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia from distinct wolf populations. East Eurasian dogs were then possibly transported to Europe with people, where they partially replaced European Paleolithic dogs.

The press release for the paper can be read here. The full text of the paper can be obtained here. To stay up to date with our work please follow us on Twitter @palaeobarn or come and join us this September for #ISBA7

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