Where did dogs first appear? DNA points to Europe

[Buster's Uncle]

Where did dogs first appear? DNA points to Europe
Associated Press
By MALCOLM RITTER 3 hours ago



This photo provided by the Center for American Archaeology on Nov. 12, 2013 shows canine bones buried at the Koster site in Greene County, Ill. The fossil specimen at this site is dated to 8,500 years ago. A large DNA study suggests dogs arose from wolves in Europe some 19,000 to 32,000 years ago. Results were published online Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013 by the journal Science. (AP Photo/Center for American Archaeology, Del Baston)



NEW YORK (AP) — For years, scientists have been dogged by this evolution question: Just where did man's best friend first appear?

The earliest known doglike fossils come from Europe. But DNA studies have implicated east Asia and the Middle East. Now a large DNA study is lining up with the fossils, suggesting dogs originated in Europe some 19,000 to 32,000 years ago.

Experts praised the new work but said it won't end the debate.

Scientists generally agree that dogs emerged from wolves to become the first domesticated animal. Their wolf ancestors began to associate with people, maybe drawn by food in garbage dumps and carcasses left by human hunters. In the process they became tamer, and scientists believe people found them useful for things like hunting and guard duty. Over a very long time in this human environment, wolves gradually turned into the first dogs.

The latest attempt to figure out where this happened was published online Thursday by the journal Science.

Researchers gathered DNA from fossils of 18 ancient wolflike and doglike creatures that lived up to 36,000 years ago in Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. They compared the genetic material to modern samples from 49 wolves from North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, 77 dogs of a wide variety of breeds including cocker spaniel, basenji and golden retriever, and four coyotes.





The DNA of modern dogs showed similarities to the genetic material from the ancient European specimens and modern-day European wolves, the researchers reported.

The first dogs evolved by associating with hunter-gatherers rather than farmers, since dogs evidently appeared before agriculture did, they said.

"There are now, based on genetic evidence, three alternative hypotheses for the origin of dogs," said Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, a study author.

He said his results suggest a better case for Europe than for east Asia or the Middle East. He also said the kind of wolf that gave rise to dogs is now extinct.

Olaf Thalmann of the University of Turku in Finland, another author, said the work doesn't mean that Europe is the only place where dogs emerged.

"We conclude that Europe played a major role in the domestication process," he said in an email.

The work makes a strong argument for an origin in Europe, although it might not be the only place, said Greger Larson of Durham University in England, who did not participate in the research. "I think it's a real step in the right direction."


http://news.yahoo.com/where-did-dogs-first-appear-dna-points-europe-191702166.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Dogs first tamed in prehistoric Europe, DNA reveals
Reuters
By Ben Hirschler 5 hours ago



A dog yawns as it looks at people passing by at a street in central Madrid April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Susana Vera



LONDON (Reuters) - Humans first made dogs their best friends in prehistoric Europe, where groups of hunter-gathers learnt to tame dangerous wolves into companions between 19,000 and 32,000 years ago, scientists said on Thursday.

The new research, based on analysis of DNA fragments from fossils of ancient wolves and dogs, confounds earlier theories that dogs were originally domesticated in the Middle East or East Asia.

Experts generally agree that dog training started out with a few grey wolves hanging around human encampments in the hope of picking up scraps. Over time, humans accepted them, perhaps initially as guards or hunting partners, and taught them to be useful companions.

Where and when this happened, however, has been a matter of controversy.

Now Olaf Thalmann, from Finland's University of Turku, and colleagues believe they have placed initial doggy taming firmly in Europe after finding that modern dogs' DNA most closely matches that of either ancient European canines or modern European wolves, but not wolves outside Europe.

"We're pretty sure that Europe played a major role in the domestication of the dog," Thalmann, whose research was published on Thursday in the journal Science, said in an interview.

The fact that dogs were domesticated so early in Europe means they joined human society when people were still hunter-gathers rather than farmers.

As a result, Thalmann believes the first "proto-dogs" might have taken advantage of carcasses left on site by early human hunters, as well as helping them catch prey and providing defense against competing predators at kills.

The genetic analysis carried out by his team was based on mitochondrial DNA - a common tool for tracking ancestry - that was extracted from fossils of eight ancient dogs and 10 wolves.

This was compared to genetic samples from 130 modern dogs and wolves, leading the researchers to conclude that the first dogs originated in Europe from a population of grey wolves that is now extinct.

Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mothers to daughters, changes little from generation to generation. By studying it, scientists are able to calculate when populations or species start to separate genetically. But it does not provide a complete genetic picture, leaving some uncertainty.

While the early dogs that socialized with tribes of hunter-gathers would have looked very similar to wolves, the vast variety of breeds evident around the world today is a function of more recent human activity, experts believe.

"Modifying a wolf into a Chihuahua is clearly a long process and most of the active breeding has happened in just the last few hundred years," Thalmann said.


http://news.yahoo.com/dogs-first-tamed-prehistoric-europe-dna-reveals-191202244.html

[Buster's Uncle]

DNA evidence suggests that dogs were domesticated in Europe
By Kwame Opam on November 14, 2013 02:17 pm



Dog burial from Horizon 11 of the Koster site, Greene County, Illinois, US



Domesticated dogs are incredibly diverse. According to the Fédération Cynologique Internationale, the largest internationally recognized registry of dog breeds, there are currently 339 breeds all over the world, all aiding humans in work, play, and companionship. However, new findings published in Science this week suggest that they all can trace their relationship with humans back to Europe.

To determine where and when domestication occurred for canines, a team of scientists led by Olaf Thalmann at Finland's University of Turku used mitochondrial DNA to establish links between a wide range of modern dog  and wolf species with ancient canine fossils dated between 19,000 and 33,000 years old. The scientists saw that genetic sequences from modern dog breeds most closely matched those from both modern and ancient Europe. Thalmann was also able to extrapolate that because of the age of the oldest fossils employed in the study, wolves may have been domesticated during the hunter-gatherer period of human history.

Determining when dogs were domesticated has always been a complicated subject. An earlier study published in Nature in 2010 suggested that domestication events for dogs most likely occurred in the Middle East, while a 2011 Heredity study claimed that Y-chromosome DNA supported the theory that domestic dogs originated in Southeast Asia. This new research likely isn't the final word on what's become an ongoing debate.


http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/14/5104470/dna-evidence-suggests-that-dogs-were-domesticated-in-europe

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Old Dog, New Origin: First Pooches Were European
LiveScience.com
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer  6 hours ago






Man's best friend gained that title in Europe, according to a new study that pinpoints the origin of dog domestication to between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago.

The study places the origin of dogs before the rise of agriculture, suggesting that human hunter-gatherers tamed the wolf. Whereas previous genetic studies had placed the origin of dogs in the Middle East or Asia, this research is the first to focus on the genetics of ancient dogs, rather than looking at modern dogs and trying to extrapolate back.

"All modern dogs analyzed in our study were closely related to either ancient dogs and wolves from Europe or modern wolves from there," study scientist Olaf Thalmann, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku in Finland, told LiveScience in an email.


The beginning of dogs

Dogs are the only large carnivores that humans have ever domesticated, but when and where dangerous wolves became lovable pups has been hard to pin down.

That's because, genetically speaking, dogs are a mess. They've been moved around the world for centuries, mixing their genomes indiscriminately at far-flung ports of call, and even — early in their evolution — mating with their wild counterpart, the wolf. Adding to the confusion is the intensive period of selective dog breeding that started in the late 1880s and gave humans the wide variety of dog breeds known today.



The skull of a Pleistocene wolf from the Trou des Nutons cave (Belgium), aged 26,000 years ago.


Archaeologists have found definite evidence of domestication in the form of dogs and humans buried together at least 14,000 years ago. Some have suggested domestication occurred earlier than that, perhaps as long as 33,000 years ago, based on some doglike skulls found in Belgium and in Siberia.

Original genetic analyses put dog domestication much earlier, with researchers writing in a 1997 paper in the journal Science suggesting that dogs diverged from wolves more than 100,000 years ago.

Those studies compared modern dogs with modern wolves, however, the analysis was muddied by dogs' weird breeding history. In the new study, published Friday (Nov. 15) in the journal Science, scientists analyzed ancient DNA from prehistoric dog fossils found in Europe and the New World.


Genetic ties

The researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from these fossils. Mitochondria are tiny organs inside cells that generate the energy that cells need to run. The genes that control the mitochondria are passed down the maternal line.



Skull of a Palaeolithic dog from the Goyet cave (Belgium), calibrated age of 36,000 years Before the Present


Comparing the ancient mitochondrial DNA with the mitochondrial DNA of modern dog breeds and wolves revealed a common link to Europe, the researchers found.

"Dogs seem to have been domesticated or first evolved from a population of ancient wolves living in Europe," said study researcher Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "That ancient wolf population is now extinct."

"We've kind of made mistakes [in previous studies] assuming that ancient wolves and modern wolves are direct ancestors and descendants," Wayne told LiveScience.

The finding suggests that wolves first started hanging around humans during a time when people hunted large animals like mammoth. The remains of mammoth and other megafauna carcasses would have been good eating, and friendlier wolves may have gradually started interacting with the human hunter-gatherers.

The study researchers also examined some of the most controversial prehistoric canid fossils, including one found in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia and others discovered in Belgium. These remains date as far back as 36,000 years ago. The new study finds that the Siberian and Belgian pooches were not direct ancestors to modern dogs. It seems they may have been an unknown species of doglike wolf, or they may have been an "aborted domestication event," Wayne said.



Dog burial from Horizon 11 of the Koster site, Greene County, Illinois, US


A European story

Genetics is a tricky way to try to establish the timing of dogs' emergence, said Clive Wynne, a dog cognition researcher at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study. Many of the genetic techniques used were developed to trace the divergence of species over millions of years. Dog domestication happened much more quickly, and a few thousand years makes a big difference in whether dogs were originally the pets of hunter-gatherers or more sedentary farmers, Wynne told LiveScience.

Most researchers already agreed that the rise of dogs occurred before the rise of agriculture, said Greger Larson, an archaeologist and geneticist at Durham University in the U.K. who was not involved in the study. But the new geographical information linking dogs to prehistoric Europe is "a really big step in the right direction," Larson told LiveScience. 

"What it absolutely establishes is that there are canids in Europe that are contributing DNA to modern dogs and that Europe is, without question, part of the story," Larson said. "Zooarchaeologists and archaeologists have known that for a long time, but the genetic data has not backed that up."

The next step is to delve into the nuclear DNA of ancient dogs, Wayne and Thalmann said. The DNA in a cell's nucleus is passed down from both parents, and thus holds information the maternal mitochondrial DNA doesn't. It was nuclear DNA studies that revealed Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, for example. New genetic techniques should make similar studies possible in dogs, Larson said.

"That'll be a game-changer," he said.

Genetic research is also revealing the changes necessary to turn a dog into a wolf. A study published in January in the journal Nature found that, unlike wolves, dogs have evolved the ability to eat starchy food — a talent that may have given them a paw up in surviving off human trash.


http://news.yahoo.com/old-dog-origin-first-pooches-were-european-191015214.html