Man's Best Friend Older than Thought

The discovery of dogs pushes back the time that the first dogs evolved from their wolf ancestors by around 5,000 years. DNA analysis shows the jaw belonged to one of the earliest known domesticated dogs and that people lived closely with them in Britain 15,000 years ago, thousands of years before farm animals were domesticated.

It also suggests that the friendship between the very first dogs and stone age humans was there almost from the very start, according to Dr William Marsh of the Natural History Museum.

"It shows that by 15,000 years ago dogs and humans already had an incredibly tight, close relationship – and this tiny jawbone, which seems like such a small thing, has helped to unlock the whole human story of how that partnership began."

The first dogs were descendants of grey wolves that lingered around human camps at the end of the Ice Age, scavenging leftovers and slowly becoming tamer. Over time, people started using these animals to help with hunting, guarding and tracking, turning them into working partners rather than wild predators.

After hundreds of generations of human breeding, the dogs that emerged had shorter muzzles, smaller teeth and an enormous range of sizes, from lapdogs to hulking guardians.