According to new research, a 35,000 year old piece of bone sheds new light on human’s relationship with domesticated dogs. According to the study, published on May 21 in Current Biology, human’s relationship with their best friend dates to somewhere between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago. Earlier estimates put the date much later, at roughly 16,000 years ago and after the last ice age.

The radiocarbon dated bone belonged to a Taimyr wolf, which is the common ancestor of modern wolves and domestic dogs.

“Dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than is generally believed. The only other explanation is that there was a major divergence between two wolf populations at that time, and one of these populations subsequently gave rise to all modern wolves,” says Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in a statement.

According to Dalén, the second explanation is unlikely because it would mean that the second of the wolf species became extinct in the wild.

“It is [still] possible that a population of wolves remained relatively untamed but tracked human groups to a large degree, for a long time,” said first author of the study Pontus Skoglund of Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute.

The small piece of bone on which the research was based was found during an expedition in the Taimyr Peninsula of Siberia. It was only by playing hunches that the researchers found out what they had. They initially didn’t know it was a wolf bone until genetic testing was conducted. They then carbon dated it based on a feeling. Wolves are common in the area and they had no idea, initially how old it was.

The evidence that they uncovered shows that modern Siberian Huskies and Greenland sled dogs are very closely related to the Taimyr wolf.

“The power of DNA can provide direct evidence that a Siberian Husky you see walking down the street shares ancestry with a wolf that roamed Northern Siberia 35,000 years ago. This wolf lived just a few thousand years after Neandertals disappeared from Europe and modern humans started populating Europe and Asia,“ said Skoglund.

The research contradicts a study, published in February, which showed that domesticated dogs didn’t emerge until roughly 12,000 years ago. That research relied on a 3D scanning method to measure ancient canid skulls which were then compared to known modern and extinct species.

That research also seemed to agree with research published in January which showed that, while people first arrived in North America about 15,000 years ago, the first domestic dogs do not seem to have arrived until 10,000 years ago.

Assuming that Skoglund and his colleagues are correct, it creates something of a mystery. If domesticated dogs were living in Siberia 27,000 to 40,000 years ago why didn’t they cross with the first North Americans? The Bering Land Bridge, after all, originated in Northern Siberia. Why did it take an additional 5,000 years, 20,000 years after the original domestication, for them to be imported?