INTRODUCTION: The physical evidence of fossilized human and canine remains has suggested that dogs (Canis familiaris), first appeared about 14,000 years ago (Patterson, 1978), (Coren, 1994), (Bursch, 1998). Wayne and his colleagues hypothesized that dogs were really wolves (Canis lupus) in disguise. To test their theory, they collected tissue samples from 162 wolves from Europe, North America, Asia and Arabia, as well as from 140 dogs from 67 “pureâ€

The UCLA researchers, Wayne, etal., tried different phylogenetic methods of sorting the relationships among the haplotypes of the dog and wolf samples. Regardless of the method used, the samples all fell into four distinct groups, or clades. It appears that based on this sorting, the dogs had two unique, common wolf ancestors. This finding suggests that there were two separate domestication events, as people domesticated dogs, thus isolating them from the wolves and so creating each of the two clades. The other two clades had some wolf haplotype features indicating that on two subsequent points, wolves were either brought in to mate with dogs or dogs mated with their wild forebears. Clade I, contained the most members of the dogs tested – 19 out of 26 haplotypes. That finding suggests that some three-quarters of modern dogs (including some ancient dogs such as the greyhound) stem from a single female linkage and a common domestication. The researchers were unable to find a genetic link with the dog sequences to a particular wolf population living today. It is probable that the actual wolf progenitor population, from which the present-day dog and wolf populations originated, is now extinct.

Some topics in this essay:
North America, Mitochondrial DNA, ABSTRACT-- Human, Coyote Canis, SUMMARY Mitochondria, Asia Arabia, DNA Cusick, mitochondrial dna, gray wolves, dogs wolves, 14000 ago, characteristics relatively recently, dogs gray wolves, dogs physically resembled, physically resembled wolves, resembled wolves, physically resembled, dogs 67, north america, wolves dogs, 14000 ago based, 135000 ago,