Professor Emeritus Paul Sciulli, was part of a large team that recently published a massive paper in Science on the origins of dogs in the Americas! In their article “The emergence and diversification of dog morphology” Sciulli and his co-authors analyzed over 600 canid skulls from the past 50,000 years and show that dogs didn’t start looking different from wolves until around 11,000 years ago—much earlier than the rise of modern breeds. By the early Holocene, dogs were already developing diverse skull shapes, even though Pleistocene canids remained wolf-like. This study reveals that dog diversity began millennia before Victorian breeding and highlights how early human–dog relationships shaped the animals that eventually became our closest companions.

Read the full article here on the Journal’s Website!