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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

This is the first time scientists have directly tracked natural selection in a large animal over a time-scale of 100,000 years [crick.ac.uk]:

An international group of geneticists and archaeologists, led by the Francis Crick Institute, have found that the ancestry of dogs can be traced to at least two populations of ancient wolves. The work moves us a step closer to uncovering the mystery of where dogs underwent domestication, one of the biggest unanswered questions about human prehistory.

Dogs are known to have originated from the gray wolf, with this domestication occurring during the Ice Age, at least 15,000 years ago. But where this happened, and if it occurred in one single location or in multiple places, is still unknown.

Previous studies using the archaeological record and comparing the DNA of dogs and modern wolves have not found the answer.

In their study, published in Nature [nature.com] today (29 June), the researchers turned to ancient wolf genomes to further understanding of where the first dogs evolved from wolves. They analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes, spanning the last 100,000 years, from Europe, Siberia and North America.

[...] By analysing the genomes, the researchers found that both early and modern dogs are more genetically similar to ancient wolves in Asia than those in Europe, suggesting a domestication somewhere in the east.

However, they also found evidence that two separate populations of wolves contributed DNA to dogs. Early dogs from north-eastern Europe, Siberia and the Americas appear to have a single, shared origin from the eastern source. But early dogs from the Middle East, Africa and southern Europe appear to have some ancestry from another source related to wolves in the Middle East, in addition to the eastern source.

[...] As the 72 ancient wolf genomes spanned around 30,000 generations, it was possible to look back and build a timeline of how wolf DNA has changed, tracing natural selection in action.

[...] "We found several cases where mutations spread to the whole wolf species, which was possible because the species was highly connected over large distances. This connectivity is perhaps a reason why wolves managed to survive the Ice Age while many other large carnivores vanished."

Journal Reference:
Bergström, A., Stanton, D.W.G., Taron, U.H. et al. Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs [open]. Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04824-9 [doi.org]

Original Submission