Name: Can Bones Reveal How Dogs Evolved from Wolves?
Uploaded: undefined
Duration: undefined

NOVA

A researcher uncovers 30,000-year-old skulls from Europe, which appear to be halfway between those of wolves and domestic canines. But do the skulls actually belong to the ancestors of today's dogs?

Learn more about the evolution of our furry companions.

Can Bones Reveal How Dogs Evolved from Wolves?

Viking

Carlisle Companies

NOVA Science Trust Logo

A researcher uncovers 30,000-year-old skulls from Europe, which appear to be halfway between those of wolves and domestic canines. But do the skulls actually belong to the ancestors of today's dogs?

Learn more about the evolution of our furry companions.

Nature

Can Bones Reveal How Dogs Evolved from Wolves?Published: March 2, 2020Onscreen: Can bones reveal how dogs evolved from wolves? Narrator: The relative proportions of the skulls of wolves and dogs are markedly different. But in 2008, Mietje made an intriguing discovery. She was studying a 30,000-year-old wolf skull called the Goyet skull, named after the cave it had been excavated from in the 19th century.Mietje Germonpré: At that time, the discoverers thought it was the skull of a wolf, but I was not very happy with that, because it, it looked different to me.Narrator: Mietje’s careful measurements backed up her hunch. This was no ordinary wolf.Germonpré: This skull is clearly smaller than the skull of wild wolves. The snout is wider and shorter, more comparable to the skull of the modern dogs.Narrator: The shape of the wolf skull seemed to be halfway between a wolf and a modern dog, a proto-dog.The Goyet skull was not unique. Hunting through other European collections, Miejte uncovered more dog-like wolf skulls, also around 30,000 years old. Could these strange-shaped European wolves be the ancestors of modern dogs? Bones alone cannot answer that question. Scientists would need a much more precise tool.Oxford University is home to the PalaeoBARN D.N.A. laboratory. Greger Larson is the lead researcher.Greger Larson: We are trying to establish a pattern, through time and space, of the different genetic signatures that dog populations and wolf populations have had, across the world, over the last 20- to 30,000 years.Narrator: Thanks to recent advances in sampling technology, forensic D.N.A. examinations can now be conducted on prehistoric bone, allowing them to compare Mietje’s 30,000-year-old specimens to modern dog D.N.A.Larson: If dog domestication took place 30,000 years ago, and there was an unbroken line between those dogs and the dogs that we currently have sleeping on our sofas, then you would expect that the genetics of those dogs 30,000 years ago would match the modern population’s. But the limited genetic information that we have from the canids that would be dogs from 30,000 years ago doesn’t match modern dogs at all.Narrator: Mietje’s 30,000-year old European proto-dogs appear to have left no descendants. But Greger’s team also tested samples from nearly a hundred other prehistoric canids, and in this data they have found the earliest known ancestors of modern dogs.Larson: Between 12- and 15- or 16,000 years ago, we do find specimens that are starting to possess genetic signatures that match those that we find in modern populations.Narrator: But it isn’t as simple as a single ancestral line. They found several, spread across Eurasia.Larson: So, it looks like, within dogs, we have three geographically partitioned populations that are differentiated genetically and geographically.Narrator: The three ancestral dog populations and Mietje’s extinct proto-dogs do, however, share one thing in common, something that may give a clue to how dogs appeared in the first place. They were all found at sites associated with another creature, humans.Archaeological evidence shows that 40,000 years ago modern humans began moving into northern Eurasia, replacing the Neanderthals who came before them, and apparently initiating a transformation in the wolves they encountered.Germonpré: Really something was going on there. Once modern humans arrived in Europe, we see that the wolf remains start to change.Narrator: The evidence suggests dog-like wolves may have appeared several times over the thousands of years since people arrived, always in places where wolves and humans shared hunting grounds.Larson: The formation of a close relationship between people and wolves led to dogs, because that’s what dogs are: they are an emergent property of a very close relationship between wolf populations and human populations.

United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

US & Territories

Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. What are the implications of these dramatic developments in the Arctic? Scientists and local communities alike are struggling to grasp the scale of the methane threat and what it means for our climate future. (Premiered February 2, 2022)

In the Arctic, enormous releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, threaten the climate.

Arctic Sinkholes

The top half of Jupiter in blue and green against a night sky

A composite image of Jupiter using images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

Explore the cosmos, delve into ancient history, and follow an extreme rescue with NOVA’s most-watched documentaries released in 2022.

NOVA’s most popular science documentaries of 2022

Four bright orange loops brand off of a dark blue blob

A transmission electron micrograph of HIV-1 virus particles (orange) replicating from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell. Credit: NIAID, Flickr

Scientists have cured a handful of people of HIV by piggybacking on treatments they received for blood cancer. But does that bring a widespread cure any closer?

Can Bones Reveal How Dogs Evolved from Wolves?

Support Provided By

Explore More

Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?

Dog Tales

The World’s Smartest Dog

Transcript

Credits

Support Provided By

Explore More

Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?

Dog Tales

The World’s Smartest Dog