Who made the dog’s snout?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Dogs and wolves are distant cousins. But when did they go their own ways?
Allowen Evin and Carly Ameen at the University of Exeter sniffed out the answer.
They measured the sizes and shapes of over SIX HUNDRED wolf and dog skulls… from THOUSANDS of years of dog history. Talk about a bone collection!
The findings? Modern dogs have WAY more skull diversity than wolves. Ranging from short-faced pugs to long-snout borzois.
And, twist: this diversity isn’t just from modern breeding! Early dogs were already more diverse than wolves eleven thousand years ago!
Let’s just say, our ancestors were shaping more than just stone tools!
Reference: Allowen Evin et al., The emergence and diversification of dog morphology. Science 390, 741-744(2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adt0995