STUDY: DOGS ARE DESCENDED FROM ASIAN WOLVES

They've concluded domesticated dogs originated from wolves in eastern Asia nearly 15,000 years ago. The animals travelled with humans through Europe and Asia and across the Bering Strait with the first settlers in America.

Swedish and Chinese scientists studied the genes of 654 dogs and found a higher genetic diversity among East Asian dogs suggested that people there were the first to domesticate dogs from wolves.

The study, published in the journal Science, quoted lead researcher Peter Savolainen of Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology: "Most earlier guesses have focused on the Middle East as the place of origin for dogs, based on few known facts - a small amount of archaeological evidence from the region, and the fact that several other animals were domesticated there."

A separate study by researchers in the US, Latin America and Sweden said dogs with DNA linked to Eurasian wolves were present in the Americas before the arrival of European explorers in the 15th century.

That suggests the first settlers in America, believed to have crossed the Bering Strait from Asia 12,000-14,000 years ago, brought domesticated dogs with them, the study said.

Uppsala University researcher Carles Vila said the presence of dogs could explain why the settlers spread through the Americas relatively quickly.

The two studies disagreed on when people first started domesticating dogs from wolves.

The earliest archaeological finding is a dog's jawbone from Germany which is 14,000 years old. The Swedish-Chinese research team said DNA, coupled with archaeological finds, pointed to a point of origin about 15,000 years ago.