pb_safety_club's comments

This is a very interesting study, and the authors clearly did very good work. That said, I don't think the main takeaway is as surprising as some of the coverage makes it sound. It's already very well established, both historically and genetically, that modern breeds were created by Victorian-era breeders using the dogs available in local populations. So the idea that the "raw material" (i.e. genetic variants) of 18th–19th century working dogs shaped modern morphology fits neatly with what we already know. For example (drawing from my area of expertise), the bull-and-terrier types that became modern pit bull–type breeds were created by crossing bull-baiting dogs with terriers, and they still reflect traits from both. The value of the paper, to me, isn't in overturning prior understanding but in providing a much more detailed timeline of how and when this diversification happened. It’s a solid contribution, but just maybe not as paradigm-shifting as recent headlines imply.