Dogs are currently the only large carnivore and one of the few species in the canidae family to have been domesticated. While not much is known about the domestication of dogs with disagreements over when the dog was first domesticated, where it was first domesticated and exactly how it was domesticated, one thing that is generally agreed upon is that dogs were the first animal ever to be domesticated domesticated. Dog-like fossil remains can be dated to around 33,000 years ago (before present) with perhaps the earliest verified dog remains dating back to 12,000-11,000 years ago (Galibert et al 2011). In the Goyet Cave in Belgium, the remains of a dog skull showing clear differentiation from that of a wolf were discovered and dated to 31,700 years ago by accelerator mass spectrometry. The remains are assumed to resemble prehistoric dogs and are identified as a Paleolithic dog (Galibert et al 2011). Despite these findings, however, identifying the relative age of early prehistoric dogs is difficult due to the fact that the key morphological characteristics that differentiate Canis familiaris from Canis lupus were not established during the initial stages of domestication (Larson et al. 2012 ). Complicating this, the range of variation in ancient wolf populations is unknown, as is the amount of time required for such traits to appear in dogs (Larson et al. 2012). Accordingly, although the morphological data on the fossil remains found at the above-mentioned sites suggest a prehistoric dog, it may be possible that the fossils represent either ancient wolves in the initial stages of a domestication process, or a morphologically distinct population of wolves that they have since become extinct (Larson et al. 2012). Regardless of… half of the paper… 10,000 years ago, there was more intense selection for smaller, more docile dogs that allowed close human contact (Wayne and vonHoldt 2012). Works Cited Axelsson, E., et al. 2013. Genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a high-starch diet. Nature 495(7441):360-364 Larson, G, et al. 2012. Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(23): 8878-8883Wayne, R. and B. vonHoldt 2012. Evolutionary genomics of dog domestication. Mammalian Genome: Official Journal of the International Mammalian Genome Society 23(1-2):3-18 Galibert, F., P. Quignon, C. Hitte, and C. André 2011. Towards understanding the evolutionary history and domestication of dog. Comptes Rendus. Biologies 334(3), 190-196.