what was the first animal domesticated by humans
Domestication The dog was the first domesticated vertebrate,[9][10][11] and was established across Eurasia before the end of the Late Pleistocene era, well before cultivation and before the domestication of other animals.[10] The archaeological and genetic data suggest that long-term bidirectional gene flow between wild and domestic stocks – including donkeys, horses, New and Old World camelids, goats, sheep, and pigs – was common.[7][12] Given its importance to humans and its value as a model of evolutionary and demographic change, domestication has attracted scientists from archaeology, palaeontology, anthropology, botany, zoology, genetics, and the environmental sciences.[13] Among birds, the major domestic species today is the chicken, important for meat and eggs, though economically valuable poultry include the turkey, guineafowl and numerous other species. Birds are also widely kept as cagebirds, from songbirds to parrots. The longest established invertebrate domesticates are the honey bee and the silkworm. Terrestrial snails are raised for food, while species from several phyla are kept for research, and others are bred for biological control.
Evolution of mammals Recent molecular phylogenetic studies suggest that most placental orders diverged late in the Cretaceous period, about 100 to 85 million years ago, but that modern families first appeared later, in the late Eocene and early Miocene epochs of the Cenozoic period.[98][99] Fossil-based analyses, on the contrary, limit the placentals to the Cenozoic.[100] Many Cretaceous fossil sites contain well-preserved lizards, salamanders, birds, and mammals, but not the modern forms of mammals. It is likely that they simply did not exist, and that the molecular clock runs fast during major evolutionary radiations.[101] On the other hand, there is fossil evidence from 85Â million years ago of hoofed mammals that may be ancestors of modern ungulates.[102]