Scientists looking into the genome from an ancient lower jaw bone of an at least 27,000 years old Taimyr wolf believe that it represents the most recent, common ancestor of
modern wolves and dogs. This is a significant difference from the accepted theory that modern-day dogs diverged from wolves no more than 16,000 years ago.
"Dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than is generally believed," says Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. "The only other explanation is that there was a major divergence between two wolf populations at that time, and one of these populations subsequently gave rise to all modern wolves." Dalén considers this second explanation less likely, since it would require that the second wolf population subsequently became extinct in the wild.
"It is [still] possible that a population of wolves remained relatively untamed but tracked human groups to a large degree, for a long time," adds first author of the study Pontus Skoglund of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.
Developing information about the evolution of wolves and dogs in
nothing new.
Scientists once thought that dogs descended from gray wolves. Now, through genetic studies, researchers know that dogs and wolves share a common ancestor instead of a direct lineage.
Their common ancestor was a prehistoric wolf that lived in Europe or Asia anywhere between 9,000 to 34,000 years ago, according to various studies. (Several subgroups of prehistoric wolves went extinct about 10,000 years ago, at the same time as the mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers.)
The Taimyr wolf is not that wolf. It does mean a lot to humanity and how we got to where we are today.
If dogs first befriended hunter-gatherers, rather than farmers, then perhaps the animals helped with hunting or keeping other carnivores away. For instance, an author of a new book claims humans and dogs teamed up to drive Neanderthals to extinction. Skoglund also suggested the Siberian husky followed nomads across the Bering Land Bridge, picking up wolf DNA along the way.