New studies of old dogs help scientists understand where they came from

Scientists are tracing back the history of dogs using the oldest genes from the species ever studied. Scientists think dogs descended from an ancient population of gray wolves somewhere in Europe or Asia. But exactly when and where this happened remain a mystery. Researchers examined ancient genes from the remains of over 200 dogs and wolves and found that the oldest dated back to about 15,800 years ago. Ancient dogs' lives were closely tied to the movements of the humans they lived with. Scientists can’t paint a picture of exactly what the first dogs looked like, but think they resembled smaller wolves. The new studies were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.