From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 60534
Date: 2008-09-30
----- Original Message -----From: Piotr GasiorowskiSent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 6:13 AMSubject: Re: [tied] Re: NegauOn 2008-09-30 12:33, Arnaud Fournet wrote:
> Genetic studies of dogs suggest they are separated from wolfes for about
> 100000 years.
Even if those molecular dates are correct (opinions vary) they don't
imply domestication that early. Dogs may derive form an otherwise
extinct wild species or subspecies of _Canis_, closely related to but
not identical with modern _Canis lupus_, which, by the way, has recently
been split into several (at least five) different species of "wolves" on
the basis of genetic studies. They seem to have diverged from the grey
wolf lineage at different times, but in each case hundreds of millennia ago.
Piotr