Overview
- Using 3D geometric morphometrics on 643 canid skulls spanning 50,000 years, researchers identified the earliest recognizably domestic dog morphology at Veretye in northwest Russia about 11,000 years ago.
- After that point, dogs diversified rapidly in skull size and shape to about half of modern cranial variation, with reduced overall skull size detectable around 9,700–8,700 years ago and greater shape variance from roughly 8,200 years ago.
- Domestic-type skulls are later evident in North America (about 8,500 years ago, Illinois) and Asia (about 7,500 years ago), while Late Pleistocene specimens in the dataset did not show clear domestic morphologies.
- A complementary Science paper sequenced 17 ancient dog genomes from East and Central Eurasia, indicating early regional lineages and occasional movement or trade of dogs between human groups.
- The authors caution that the timing and location of initial domestication remain unresolved and note study limits, including skull-only focus, sparse Late Pleistocene coverage, and absence of extreme modern cranial forms in archaeological dogs.