Victorian kennel clubs are often credited with creating the modern dog through selective breeding – unleashing the diversity in breeds we see today. But new research suggests they were only part of a much longer story.

By analysing 643 skulls of ancient and modern dogs and wolves, researchers discovered that dogs were already remarkably diverse more than 10,000 years ago. The variation in skull shapes during the Mesolithic period (9,000 to 4,000BC) was already half the total variation we see in modern breeds.

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