• Molecular systematics indicate that the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) descends from one or added populations of wild wolves (Canis lupus)

• As reflected in the nomenclature, dogs are descended from the wolf and are able to interbreed with wolves.

Genetic analyses have so far yielded divergent results. Vilà, Savolainen, and colleagues Dog Tags (1997) concluded that the ancestors of dogs split off from other wolves between 75,000 and 135,000 years ago, while a subsequent analysis by Savolainen et al. (2002) indicated a "common origin from a one gene pool for all dog populations" between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago in East Asia.