From mongrels to poodles

Ursula Goodenough on The Evolvability Of Dogs:

One of my daughters recently moved in with me for a while, and she brought along her dog Oscar. As a life-long cat person, this was a first, and I’ve become enchanted. This led me, in the context of last week’s discussion of food domestication, to read up on the domestication of the dog from the wolf, an event followed much later by the establishment of some 300 dog breeds. (Oscar is decidedly a mongrel). I learned that amazing insights into dog genetics have been acquired in the past few years; an excellent online-accessible review article provides details and references.
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Fossil evidence of dog-human cohabitation goes back 30,000 years, and genetic evidence indicates that most modern dogs descend from a wolf —> dog domestication event that took place in central Asia. Until recent times, these domesticated dogs were interbreeding “mutts,” moving across the planet with their journeying humans and probably on occasion back-crossing with wild wolves. And then, some 200 years ago, dog breeding was initiated in England, generating the highly inbred and distinctive lines we encounter today.

The rest of the article is full of scientific facts.