RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Ancient European dog genomes reveal continuity since the early Neolithic JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 068189 DO 10.1101/068189 A1 Laura R. Botigué A1 Shiya Song A1 Amelie Scheu A1 Shyamalika Gopalan A1 Amanda L. Pendleton A1 Matthew Oetjens A1 Angela M. Taravella A1 Timo Seregély A1 Andrea Zeeb-Lanz A1 Rose-Marie Arbogast A1 Dean Bobo A1 Kevin Daly A1 Martina Unterländer A1 Joachim Burger A1 Jeffrey M. Kidd A1 Krishna R. Veeramah YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/05/068189.abstract AB Europe has played a major role in dog evolution, harbouring the oldest uncontested Palaeolithic remains and having been the centre of modern dog breed creation. We sequenced the whole genomes of an Early and End Neolithic dog from Germany, including a sample associated with one of Europe’s earliest farming communities. Both dogs demonstrate continuity with each other and predominantly share ancestry with modern European dogs, contradicting a Late Neolithic population replacement previously suggested by analysis of mitochondrial DNA and a Late Neolithic Irish genome. However, our End Neolithic sample possesses additional ancestry found in modern Indian dogs, which we speculate may be derived from dogs that accompanied humans from the Eastern European steppe migrating into Central Europe. By calibrating the mutation rate using our oldest dog, we narrow the timing of dog domestication to 20,000–40,000 years ago. Interestingly, the extreme copy number expansion of the AMY2B gene found in modern dogs was not observed in the ancient samples, indicating that the AMY2B copy number increase arose as an adaptation to starch-rich diets after the advent of agriculture in theNeolithic period.