Oldest Known Dog Bone Hints Our Best Friends Were With Us Earlier Than Thought

Scientists are using an ancient bone to figure out how long our relationship with our best friends has lasted.

How long did it take for the answer to be found? No one can say for certain. Carbon dating helps narrow it down.

The canine humerus was found in the Basque Country, Spain in 1985 and has been dated to between 17,000 and 17,000 years ago. Multiple lines of analysis show it's not a wolf but a dog. The cracked humerus is the oldest dog bone.

It's an incredible data point for contextualizing dog domestication, and opens up new discussions about the nature of remains of "dog-like wolves" thought to be an intermediate stage between wolves and dogs.

When and how dogs differed from their wolves is one of the topics of debate.

It is generally accepted that dog domestication began between 40,000 and 20,000 years ago. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556

The identification of biological remains is difficult. Identification is usually down to bone shape due to the ravages of time. Since wolves may have had a variety of body shapes in the past, it's not necessarily reliable. The bones from between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago have dog-like and wolf-like characteristics.

According to the researchers, the oldest remains of domestic dogs are from the Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe. The remains were recovered from France and Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany, and were dated to the year 1331.

A geneticist and anthropologist from the University of the Basque Country in Spain led a team that analyzed the Eralla bone.

The technique of radiocarbon dating is based on the decay time of carbon in the atmosphere and absorbed into living tissue. The time since the animal died was narrowed down.

They studied the bone's shape to figure out the species. The owner of the bone was a dog. It was a descendant of the other Magdalenian dogs.

The Last Glacial Maximum, which took place around 22,000 years ago, created living conditions that the word "harsh" doesn't even begin to describe.

The results suggest that wolf domestication may have taken place earlier in western Europe than previously thought.

The dating of the bones gives us a relationship with dogs. The domestication process may need to be reconsidered because dog-like wolves were thought to be a predecessor to dogs.

The domestication of dogs may have happened more than once. There is a chance that dogs and dog-like wolves can coexist.

Scientists may be chewing this bone for a while.

The research was published in a journal.