NAIA Official Blog

Could dogs have been around a lot longer than we thought?

A group of researchers discovered an ancient wolf bone and say its DNA suggests dogs diverged from wolves 27,000 to 40,000 years ago — not 11,000 to 16,000 years ago, as previous research has suggested.

This is an interesting finding — not just because we love dogs and are fascinated by them (though that certainly helps), but the earlier date suggests dogs lived with humans during hunter-gatherer times, rather than after the advent of agriculture. Very cool read!

Did dogs diverge from wolves earlier than we thought?

Read the report here: Ancient Wolf Genome Reveals an Early Divergence of Domestic Dog Ancestors and Admixture into High-Latitude Breeds.