A major study published in the journal Science on 13 November 2025 finds that distinctive dog morphology first appeared around 11,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Holocene, with more than 600 ancient skulls showing substantial diversity by nearly 11,000 years ago.

The finding shifts the timeline for when dogs began to take on distinctly canine forms — shorter snouts, wider and stockier heads — and challenges the idea that modern breed shapes are a product of much later, Victorian-era selective breeding. Lead researchers from the University of Montpellier and the University of Exeter presented the analysis after building detailed three-dimensional records of each specimen.

Dr. Allowen Evin, a lead researcher at the University of Montpellier, and Dr. Carly Ameen, a lead researcher at the University of Exeter, directed the project that compared skulls spanning thousands of years. The team created digital 3D models of each of the more than 600 skulls they examined to measure subtle changes in shape and proportion. This research underscores how domestication played a critical role in dogs’ evolution, as less fearful and more tolerant wolves were favored, leading to profound genetic changes.

“When you see a Chihuahua – it’s a wolf that’s been living with humans for so long that it’s been modified,” said Dr. Allowen Evin, describing how extreme modern shapes can be traced back to long-standing human influence. This interaction has been vital to the dog domestication process, which spanned tens of thousands of years, with distinctive morphology emerging around 11,000 years ago, well before agriculture reshaped other species’ domestication.

The study’s catalogue includes skulls that retain slender, wolf-like profiles alongside others with shorter snouts and broader, more robust heads. Those contrasting morphologies were already present by roughly 11,000 years ago, indicating that substantial physical diversity existed far earlier than previously believed.

Dr. Carly Ameen said the results prompt a reassessment of popular assumptions about the origins of breed diversity. “It’s really surprising. And it starts to challenge the ideas about whether or not it was the Victorians – and their kennel clubs – that drove this,” she said, directly addressing a long-standing narrative about when dog shapes emerged.

The authors published their analysis in Science on 13 November 2025, drawing on museum collections and archaeological material. Their use of digital three-dimensional models allowed consistent comparison across hundreds of specimens and provided a quantitative basis for identifying early divergence in skull form.

Findings highlight two broad patterns in the material examined: skulls that remained slender and wolf-like, and others that already displayed the shorter, stockier proportions now familiar in many modern dogs. The coexistence of those forms at the same broad point in time points to a deep and complex relationship between humans and their canine companions.

The research team’s conclusions were reported by the BBC, which summarized the paper and quoted the lead investigators on how the results alter the story of dog domestication and diversification.

Both Evin and Ameen are listed as lead researchers on the study; their institutions are named in the paper and associated materials. The journal Science carried the published paper on 13 November 2025, making the data and interpretations available to other specialists for review and follow-up work.

The study places the emergence of pronounced canine physical diversity in a much earlier era than many observers have assumed, and it frames that diversity as part of a long history of human–dog interaction rather than the product of a single later episode of selective breeding.