Dogs in Europe had been domesticated from wild wolves by at least 14,200 years ago, two new genetic studies suggest.
Both studies, published March 25 in Nature, use ancient DNA recovered from fossil dog bones to revise the early history of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). The research pushes back the confirmed date for dogs’ separation from wolves (Canis lupus) by more than 3,000 years.
The two studies are a “significant advance” in understanding how dogs evolved from wolves, says evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new work. And they show that living dogs are the result of more