Posted on 10/30/2020 3:53:23 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Now, a study published Friday in the journal Science has shown that the genetic diversity in modern dogs can be traced back to the end of the last Ice Age, linking Fido and Rex to ancient canine populations.
Researchers studied DNA extracted from bones from ancient dogs for clues to evolutionary changes that occurred thousands of years ago, and found that just after the Ice Age, there were at least five types of dog with distinct genetic ancestries. They found that dog lineages have "mixed and combined," and are still present in the dogs of today.
...
And while modern European dogs appear to come in such different shapes and sizes, genetically, they share a recent common ancestor and are not as genetically diverse as they once were.
Bergstrom told CNN that before 4,000-5,000 years ago, Europe had a greater diversity of dogs, with some animals similar to Middle Eastern, Siberian and "everything in-between" dogs.
At some stage, however, this diversity was lost, and is not found in today's European dogs.
"If we look at present-day (European) dogs, despite their enormous variation in terms of what they look like they actually derive from just a small subset of the diversity that used to exist in Europe," he said.
"It's a bit of a mystery how this happened," Bergstrom told CNN, "but likely at some point a single population of dogs banded across Europe and replaced everyone else."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
There were 26 spiecies of gulls before the Ice Age. They were labeled by letter - A gull, B gull, C gull, etc.
Only three survived: the C gull, the E gull, and one that evolved into a land animal, the B gull.
Took you a while, didnt it.
Yes....believed to have come to the Americas with the first humans.
Here are the other GGG topics introduced since the previous Digest ping:
Thanks BenLurkin.
history/archaeology ping
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