An analysis of an ancient Taimyr wolf bone suggests dogs may have been man's best friend for as long as 40,000 years.
Past genetic studies have suggested the ancestors of modern dogs diverged from wolves about 16,000 years ago, after the most recent ice age. The recent findings shows the 35,000 year old wolf bone most likely represents the most recent common ancestor of the dogs and wolves we see today, Cell Press reported.
"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."
"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.
The ancient wolf bone was discovered during an expedition to the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia. A DNA analysis revealed Siberian Huskies and Greenland sled dogs share a remarkably large number of genes with the ancient Taimyr wolf.
"The power of DNA can provide direct evidence that a Siberian Husky you see walking down the street shares ancestry with a wolf that roamed Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago," Skoglund said. "This wolf lived just a few thousand years after Neandertals disappeared from Europe and modern humans started populating of the journal Europe and Asia."
The findings were published in a recent edition Current Biology.
