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Comment by jjtheblunt | Hacker News Reader

I watch the genetic studies and it seems always presumed, in these articles, that dogs derive from wolves, not that dogs derive from siblings of wolves that derive from a common proto-canine ancestor.

The wikipedia entry considers the issue, presents data that are curious with respect ot the data in the Economist article, saying domestication is presumed from wolves roughly 14,000 years or so ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy

The Economist article hints at the curiosity, in mentioning pre-Colombian dogs in the Americas were distinct some 23,000 years ago, but then returns to the standard presumptions.

An article in Nature also considers the ancestry presumptions

https://www.nature.com/articles/505589e

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The wiki article doesn't say domestication occurred roughly 14k years ago, it says at least 14k years ago, because that's the earliest definitive evidence of a domesticated dog. Here are the next two sentences from the wiki article:

"The remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog, buried alongside humans between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, are the earliest to be conclusively identified as a domesticated dog.[9][7] Genetic studies show that dogs likely diverged from wolves between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago."

agreed. in one of the articles linked, they further summarize

"Dog ancestors diverged from modern wolf ancestors at least 27,000 years ago"

which is still compatible with the two diverged ancestries sharing a proto-canid ancestor from which proto-wolves and proto-dogs both were derived.

Interestingly, the article about Belgian prehistoric canid dna says the genetics are so varied that they don't form a clear group.

Dogs descend from an extinct wolf species that was sibling to the grey wolf. There are multiple wolf species, proto wolves date far before dog domestication.

that's consistent with what is discussed a couple days ago with article links.

do you have a dataset or study with such? it would be interesting.

We have fossil records of wolves that do not seem much different from modern grey wolves. We do not have fossil records of ancestors to the grey wolves that share much of their DNA coexisting with the grey wolves.

Occam's Razor says that the posited ancestor of Canus domesticus that shared grey wolf DNA was... the grey wolf.

I believe the linked articles number 10 and 11 in the wikipedia article have a counterexample to what you just wrote.

they do also emphasize that the "northern dogs" (huskies, malamute, akita?) are very close to wolves in shared ancestry.

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