Resumen de Man's best friend was domesticated twice
It looks as if dogs emerged from not one, but two wolf families at opposite ends of Eurasia. Debate has raged for years over whether man's best friend came from Europe or Asia, with genetic studies finding conflicting results. It now appears that both camps may be right. Laurent Frantz at the University of Oxford and his colleagues constructed an evolutionary timeline by comparing the complete genome of a 4,800-year-old dog skull from Ireland and mitochondrial DNA samples from 59 ancient dogs that lived up to 14,000 years ago, with genomes of more than 600 modern pooches from across Eurasia. The results show that dogs originated from two separate wolf populations in the eastern and western halves of Eurasia. Then, between 14,000 and 6,400 years ago, people brought Asian dogs westwards, where they partially replaced their European counterparts. This mixing of lineages is the reason why past genetic studies have been difficult to interpret, says Frantz.
