Dogs Not as Close Kin to Wolves as Thought
Source: Discovery News
Dogs Not as Close Kin to Wolves as Thought
JAN 16, 2014 05:00 PM ET // BY JENNIFER VIEGAS
A widely held belief is that dogs evolved from gray wolves, but a new study finds that the common ancestor of dogs and wolves went extinct thousands of years ago.
What's more, the extensive DNA analysis -- published in the latest PLoS Genetics -- found that dogs are more closely related to each other than to wolves, regardless of their geographic origin. The genetic overlap seen today between dogs and wolves is likely then due to interbreeding after dog domestication.
"The common ancestor of dogs and wolves was a large, wolf-like animal that lived between 9,000 and 34,000 years ago," Robert Wayne, co-senior author of the study, told Discovery News. "Based on DNA evidence, it lived in Europe."
For the study, Wayne, a professor in UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and his colleagues generated genome sequences from three gray wolves: one each from China, Croatia and Israel, representing three regions where dogs are believed to have originated.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/dogs-not-as-close-kin-to-wolves-as-thought-140116.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read
