Murugesu is a journalist by the name of jason arunn.
A wolf puppy was included in the study.
A man named Sergey Fedorov.
A study found that modern dogs are related to two populations of ancient wolves from Asia and Europe.
The story of when and where dogs were domesticated is shrouded in mystery.
Some of the ancient wolves that were analysed were up to 100,000 years old.
The researchers compared the genomes of ancient wolves and modern day dogs. They wanted to know if any of the wolves were related to the modern dogs.
Researchers would have a better idea of when dogs evolved if they found an ancient wolf that was related to a modern dog. One of the biggest questions in human prehistory is about this.
He and his team found that modern dogs were more similar to ancient wolves in Asia than they were in Europe.
They don't have enough ancient wolf samples so they can't be more specific. There are some parts of the map that don't have a lot of samples.
He says that it's due to the fact that DNA is kept for longer in cold climates. The majority of the samples that the team studied came from the north and were found in caves and permafrost.
Bergstrom thinks that the ancestors of modern dogs are in Asia. There will be a place where we don't have any samples.
Previous work suggests that modern dogs may have dual heritage. In places like Israel and the African continent, early dogs were found to be related to ancient European wolves.
Bergstrom says that it's possible that wolves contributed to the arrival of the dogs. It's possible that dogs were independently domesticated in eastern and western regions and later merged.
Modern dogs seem to have both heritages. The oldest dogs that were found to have this dual ancestry were discovered in Israel. Bergstrom says that we don't have the samples to prove the heritage from European wolves. We would like to have a dog that is 15,000 years old.
"Although previous studies have speculated the involvement of either western or eastern wolves as the ancestors of modern dogs, this large study, though far from definitive, tips the balance back to the east."
The ancient wolf populations that are the ancestors of our pampered pooches are almost certainly extinct. There is still a hunt for the smoking gun samples.
The journal's title is " Nature."
There are more on this topic.
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