But they likely didn’t realize a sneaky hitchhiker, the Near Eastern wildcat, was coming along, too. When the migrants reached Poland about 6,000 years ago and started converting forests into ...

Some wild cats tagged along; archaeologists found Near Eastern wildcat skeletons in Poland from around the same period. Archaeologist Magdalena Krajcarz of Nicolaus Copernicus University and her ...

Finally, in 2017, a paleogenetic analysis clarified that the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica) is the common ancestor of all domesticated cats. About 9,000 years ago, these wildcats ...

The Near Eastern wildcat still roams the deserts of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago the animal gave rise to the genetic lineage that ...

All of the domestic cats – from the fancy breeds to feral tabbies – fell within the Near Eastern wildcat group. Furthermore, lap cats descended from five distinct mitochondrial DNA lineages.

The remains spanned 9,000 years, from Mesolithic period to the 20th century, and covered the five known species of wildcats: Near Eastern wildcat, central Asian wildcat, European wildcat ...

The Old World wildcat ranges from Scotland to China and down into Africa, but a new DNA study indicates that just one of its lineages, that of the Near Eastern wildcat, gave rise to today’s ...

DNA analysis of global archaeological remains suggest that two wildcat populations, from the Near East and ancient Egypt, ...

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from ...