SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
It's Still a Dog's Life, But When Did It Begin?
from the San Francisco Chronicle
As scientific puzzles go, the origin of dogs may not be as important as the origin of the universe. But it strikes closer to home, and it almost seems harder to answer.
Cosmologists seem to have settled on the idea that 13.7 billion years ago the universe appeared with a bang (the big one) from nothing--albeit a kind of nothing that included the laws of physics. They assure us that although we may not be able to comprehend the numbers, this is what happened.
With dogs, there is no such agreement. A consensus seems to have been reached on only one point, which is that the ancestors of dogs were wolves. Beyond that, there are varying claims, particularly about dates and places. Dogs were domesticated, various scientists argue, between 15,000 and 100,000 years ago, in Asia or Africa or multiple times in multiple places.
Read more...
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Sign Up
... for Sigma Xi SmartBrief, a free daily summary of the latest news in scientific research, delivered straight to your in-box. Each story is summarized concisely and linked directly to the original source for further reading.
Click here to subscribe.
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.
Sending...
Your email has been sent