This skull once belonged to somebody ’s pet , over 33,000 days ago . It ’s one of the earliest get laid example of the tameness of heel — and it might actually mean modernistic hound are n’t all related to each other after all .
The skull , recently discovered in a Siberian great deal , dates to rough the same time period as a skull previously discovered in Belgium . And that ’s problematic for the mind that dogs were only ever domesticated once . Though not impossible , it ’s questionable whether man could have domesticated frump from wolves in some key localisation and then spread out out to the far east and west edges of the Eurasiatic landmass , all by 30,000 years ago .
Instead , this find may show to multiple tameness event for dogs , which might think modern heel breeds do n’t in reality represent a individual species , which in turn might confute the old evolutionary canard that a chihuahua could theoretically engender with a Great Dane . As University of Arizona researcher Greg Hodgins explains , this Siberian wiener almost sure as shooting represents a domestication upshot distinct from the one — or ones — that produced modern dogs :

“ Both the Belgian find and the Siberian discovery are domesticated coinage based on morphological machine characteristic . fundamentally , Friedrich August Wolf have longsighted thin snouts and their teeth are not crowded , and domestication issue in this shortening of the snout and broadening of the jaws and crowding of the teeth . The tilt that it is domesticated is pretty self-coloured . What ’s interesting is that it does n’t appear to be an antecedent of innovative dogs . ”
Both the Belgian and Siberian skull precede the tip of the most recent Ice Age , known as the Last Glacial Maximum . This event , which lasted from 26,000 to 19,000 years ago , severely disrupted Earth ’s ecosystems and drove many species out . Both the Siberian and Belgian dogs were likely among the metal money that did n’t make it . But the fact that these represent two antecedently unknown tameness events indicate the evolution of modern dogs might be more complicated than we had anticipated . And , as Hodgins points out , this also means that dogs have been humanity ’s best acquaintance for a longsighted , foresightful time :
“ In term of human history , before the last glacial maximum people were living with wolves or canid specie in wide separate geographical surface area of Euro - Asia , and had been exist with them long enough that they were actually deepen evolutionarily . And then mood change happened , human domicile pattern changed and those relationships with those particular lineages of animals apparently did n’t survive … The frank are not necessarily provide products or meat . They are probably allow for protection , company and perhaps helping on the hunt . And it ’s really interesting that this appears to have chance first out of all human relationships with animals . ”

ViaPLoS ONEvia theUniversity of Arizona . photograph by Nikolai D. Ovodov .
ArchaeologyBiologydomesticationEvolutionSciencesiberia
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