Genomic history of early dogs in Europe

Bergström, Anders, Furtwängler, Anja, Johnston, Sarah, Rosengren, Erika, Breidenstein, Abagail, Booth, Thomas, McCabe, Jesse B., Peto, Jessica, Williams, Mia, Kelly, Monica, Tait, Frankie, Baumann, Chris, Radzeviciute, Rita, Barrington, Christopher, Anastasiadou, Kyriaki, Gilardet, Alexandre, Glocke, Isabelle, Sherman, Mattias, Brativnyk, Anastasia, Herbig, Alexander, Prüfer, Kay, Pfrengle, Saskia, Gretzinger, Joscha, Feuerborn, Tatiana R., Reiter, Ella, Linderholm, Anna, Charlton, Sophy, Racimo, Fernando, Mikkola, Lea, Anderson-Whymark, Hugo, Baird, Douglas, Gotfredsen, Anne Birgitte, Bocherens, Hervé, Bridault, Anne, Brocke, Rainer, Drucker, Dorothée G., Fairbairn, Andrew S., Frantz, Laurent, Gasparyan, Boris, Giemsch, Liane, Germonpré, Mietje, Janssens, Luc, Kandel, Andrew W., Kjær, Kurt, Lázničková-Galetová, Martina, Loponte, Daniel, Magnell, Ola, Martin, Louise, Münzel, Susanne C., Mustafaoğlu, Gökhan, Måge, Bjørnar, Perri, Angela, Pfenninger, Franziska, Roblíčková, Martina, Roman-Binois, Annelise, Sarıtaş, Özlem, Schäppi, Katharina, Sheridan, J. Alison, Sjögren, Karl-Göran, Storå, Jan, Sørensen, Lasse Vilien, Tafelmaier, Yvonne, Ter-Nedden, Florian, Thalmann, Olaf, Larson, Greger, Schuenemann, Verena J., Krause, Johannes and Skoglund, Pontus (2026) Genomic history of early dogs in Europe. Nature, 651 (8107). pp. 986-994. ISSN 0028-0836

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Abstract

The earliest morphologically identifiable dogs are from Europe and date to at least 14,000 years ago1,2,3,4,5, although early remains are also found in other regions. The origin of early dogs in Europe, and their relationships to other dogs, has remained elusive in the absence of genome-wide data. Similarly, although dogs were the only domestic animal to predate agriculture, little is known about how the arrival of Neolithic farmers from Southwest Asia affected the dogs living with European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Here we analysed 216 canid remains, including 181 from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe. We developed a genome-wide capture approach that enriched endogenous DNA by 10–100-fold and could distinguish dog from wolf ancestry for 141 of 216 remains. The oldest dog data that we recovered are from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland, and we find that it shares ancestry with later worldwide dogs—inconsistent with the hypothesis that European Upper Palaeolithic dogs derived wholly from a separate domestication process. The Kesslerloch dog already displays more affinity to Mesolithic, Neolithic and present-day European dogs than to Asian dogs, demonstrating that dog genetic diversification had started well before 14,200 years ago. We find a Neolithic influx of Southwest Asian ancestry into Europe, but this seems to have been of smaller magnitude than in humans, suggesting that Mesolithic dogs contributed substantially to Neolithic, and, ultimately, probably also modern, European dogs.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This paper is published open access. Guidelines from the journal are as follows: "Authors publishing via the open access route are encouraged to deposit the final published PDF in their institutional repository or any suitable subject repository on publication. Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of the published article on the journal's website; in all cases, the requirement to link to the journal’s website is designed to protect the integrity and authenticity of the scientific record, with the online published version on the journal’s website clearly identified as the definitive version of record."
Uncontrolled Keywords: 4* ,/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/REFrank/4_
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 10 Apr 2026 13:30
Last Modified: 12 Apr 2026 06:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102749
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7

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