Dogs Evolved from Wolves Tamed by European Hunters 19,000 Years Ago

Scientists say that man's best friends originated in Europe. Researchers examined genetic materials, which pointed toward their origin from European wolves tamed by nomadic hunters and gatherers.

The study was carried out by the researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in UCLA's College of Letters and Science was the senior author of this research.

The researchers found that the European hunter-gatherers domesticated and tamed wolves more than 18,000 years ago, which eventually evolved into dogs.

"We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them," Wayne said in a news release. "This brings the genetic record into agreement with the archaeological record. Europe is where the oldest dogs are found."

The researchers discovered that the ancient European wolves were directly related to the domestic dogs. They accumulated and analyzed samples of dog-like and wolf-like fossils from the U.S., Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Russia, which were around 36,000-years-old. The DNA of these old fossils were then compared with the modern genomes of 77 dogs belonging to different breeds, 49 wolves belonging to Asia, North America, Middle East and Europe and four coyotes.     

"We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them," said Wayne. "This brings the genetic record into agreement with the archaeological record. Europe is where the oldest dogs are found."

The researchers concluded that the dogs which evolved from the ancient European wolves have vanished now. It was also found that the wolf domesticating European hunter-gatherers were nomadic people unlike the agricultural-based population.

"The wolf is the first domesticated species and the only large carnivore humans ever domesticated," Wayne said.

"But if domestication occurred in association with hunter-gatherers, one can imagine wolves first taking advantage of the carcasses that humans left behind - a natural role for any large carnivore - and then over time moving more closely into the human niche through a co-evolutionary process," he said further.

Wayne believes more in-depth data regarding the genetics is required to verify the conclusions of this research.

But another researcher, Olaf Thalmann, from the University of Turku, Finland, stated that the UCLA research does not prove that dogs emerged only in Europe.

 "We conclude that Europe played a major role in the domestication process," Thalmann said told NBC Bay Area.