Its Amazing they Have determined that they were wolf skulls, and not those of Dogs
PARIS (AFP) — Man’s best friend has not been around for nearly as long as thought, according to a study Thursday that brings the emergence of modern dogs forward by some 15,000 years.
The finding follows the reclassification of two fossil skulls, one more than 30,000 years old, that were the basis for dating dog domestication to a long-gone era when early humans were still roaming hunter-gatherers.
New 3D analysis of the skulls showed they were in fact those of wolves — not the earliest dogs as postulated in other studies, a research team wrote in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
This means that the earliest fossil evidence for domesticated dogs still dates to about 15,000 years ago — a time when humans started forming permanent settlements and farming, said the team.
“Scientists have been eager to put a collar on the earliest domesticated dog,” said biologist and study co-author Abby Drake of Skidmore College, New York.
“Unfortunately, their analyses weren’t sensitive enough to accurately determine the identity of these fossils.”
Drake and a team used scans and 3D visualisation software to study the shape and size of the two skulls and compare the data with measurements from the skulls of other dogs and wolves — both modern-day and ancient.
via Domesticated dogs haven’t been around for as long as we thought: study | CTV News.