Much of the diversity of dog species already existed at the time of the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago, a study that looked at their DNA and published in the journal reveals Thursday, October 29.
Science
.
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A team of researchers from the Francis Crick Institute in London sequenced the genome of 27 dogs, including fragments of 11,000-year-old skeletons, some of which lived in Europe, the Middle East and Siberia.
Back then, long before the domestication of other animal species, there were at least five dog breeds with distinct genetic origins.
“Some of the differences you see when you see dogs on the streets are from the Ice Age,”
says geneticist Pontus Skoglund, one of the study's lead authors.
"By the end of this period, the dogs were already widely dispersed across the northern hemisphere
.
"
Dogs are descendants of wolves, but the debate is not yet settled on the exact date of this evolution (which occurred during a period between 25,000 and 40,000 years).
This new study does not enter into this vast debate but confirms the idea that there is
"only one origin"
of the evolution from wolf to dog.
All dogs therefore probably have a common origin,
“an ancient and not extinct species of wolf”
.
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DNA data taken from bones makes it possible in particular to determine that European dogs around 4,000 years ago were very different from each other but that this diversity has been lost over time.
“Although today's European dogs come in various shapes and sizes, genetically they come from a subset whose diversity is much more limited than there was before,”
says another author of the study, Anders Bergstrom.
Dogs may have evolved much the same way as humans, humans have more copies of a gene that creates a digestive enzyme called salivary amylase than chimpanzees, for example.
And likewise, dogs have more copies of this gene than wolves, a tendency that became more pronounced as their diet adapted to farm life.
“Understanding the history of dogs allows us not only to understand theirs, but also our own,”
says Anders Bergstrom.
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