Fascinating page on how dogs breeds have changed over the last few hundred years

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Albert Heim Foundation

Worth a look! Check out how skulls have changed!

Most of the natural history museums have evolved from private naturalist cabinets dating back well into the 17th century. In the course of history many of these museums changed from sole exhibitions to places of research; so did the Natural History Museum Berne. Scientists in natural history museums are collecting objects from nature to investigate and document, to satisfy their natural curiosity and to increase human knowledge. Man wants to classify, he wants to understand the marvels and relationships he sees in nature. That is how most collections have begun, well before our time.

One of the most distinguished duties of a curator is to preserve those collections for the future and to publish on the collection and the results of his own scientific work. These same reasons stood behind the cynological collections here at the Museum as well. The main question, namely the origins of domestic dogs was one of the first problems that had to be tackled. During the following years – after the origins have been solved – problems around the immense diversity of modern breeds as well as problems around the influence of size and shape have arisen.
For centuries many of our modern breeds have been able to evolve without having to serve a direct use – as most other domestic animals have had to – only for the pleasure of man. There is no other animal species in the world that shows such a large variability, not only in size and shape, texture and color of the fur, and other even psychic characteristics, but also to a high degree in the shape of the skull. This is one main aspect that makes research on dog skulls so interesting. Research on dog skulls provides interesting insights into the plasticity of animal genetic material.

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Cool!

How timely for me; we have a 4 month old Golden and have been waiting for her skull shape to change. Our older Goldens have a ridge on the center of the skull that Pi doesn’t have yet–I’ve been checking it regularly to get an idea of when that ridge starts developing. Our old mutt doesn’t have this ridge, which makes me think she has Lab rather than Golden Retriever in her. It’s amazing how dogs can look so similar but have such differences.

Thanks for the link.