The first evidence for Late Pleistocene dogs in Italy

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The identification of the earliest dogs is challenging because of the absence and/or mosaic pattern of morphological diagnostic features in the initial phases of the domestication process. Furthermore, the natural occurrence of some of these characters in Late Pleistocene wolf populations and the time it took from the onset of traits related to domestication to their prevalence remain indefinite. For these reasons, the spatiotemporal context of the early domestication of dogs is hotly debated. Our combined molecular and morphological analyses of fossil canid remains from the sites of Grotta Paglicci and Grotta Romanelli, in southern Italy, attest of the presence of dogs at least 14,000 calibrated years before present. This unambiguously documents one of the earliest occurrence of domesticates in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe and in the Mediterranean. The genetic affinity between the Palaeolithic dogs from southern Italy and contemporaneous ones found in Germany also suggest that these animals were an important common adjunct during the Late Glacial, when strong cultural diversification occurred between the Mediterranean world and European areas north of the Alps. Additionally, aDNA analyses indicate that this Upper Palaeolithic dog lineage from Italy may have contributed to the genetic diversity of living dogs. Dogs were the first animals domesticated by humans, long before the advent of agriculture 1. Besides occupying a special place in our present day lives, dogs had important functional and symbolic roles throughout human history. However, the spatiotemporal context of their early domestication is debated from both archaeological and genetic perspectives: there is scant consensus on the location of first domestication centres, and the presence of one or more domestication events 1-5 , as well as a debate on the correct identification of the oldest archaeological specimens considered to represent dogs 6-11. Latest genetic models suggest the presence of dogs in Europe at least 15,000 years ago, and a divergence between dogs and wolves between about 20,000 and 40,000 years ago 5,12. Earlier potential dog domestication attempts may be represented by canid remains from Northern and Eastern Europe, and Russia 6-9,13-15 , even if their attribution to dogs or wolves is debated 5,10,16-20. The earliest archaeological specimens unequivocally attributed to dogs lived around 16,000 years ago 21-23 , and were related to Magdalenian contexts in Western Europe. Available genetic evidence suggests that the domestication process open 1