Dogs and wolves may both be canines and share a common ancestor, but new research suggests modern domestic dogs did not evolve directly from wolves.

According to a press release, the study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics, says dogs are more closely related to one another than wolves are. Researchers believe this means the genetic overlap between the two was caused by interbreeding and is not a signal of a direct line from wolves to modern domestic dogs.

After genome analysis, the study authors found the two to come from a common ancestor between 9,000 and 34,000 years ago prior to when man transitioned to agricultural societies. If true, then dogs may have been companions to hunter-gatherers and the first domesticated dog may not have been a wild wolf tamed and trained by an early farmer.

"Dog domestication is more complex than we originally thought," study senior author John Novembre, associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, said in the release. "In this analysis we didn't see clear evidence in favor of a multi-regional model, or a single origin from one of the living wolves that we sampled. It makes the field of dog domestication very intriguing going forward."

For the study, the researchers collected genome sequences from three gray wolves: one from China, one from Israel and one from Croatia. The three locations are widely believed to be places of origin for dogs. They also took two dog breed genome sequences from areas known for the origin of modern wolves, a dingo from Australia and a basenji from central Africa. For what they called an "outgroup," the researchers also sequenced the genome of a golden jackal.

They found the dog and wolf species were more closely related to one another than they were to each other. Novembre said a possibility could be that dogs evolved from another group of wolves that since became extinct because they did not come from any of the three the researchers studied.

Study lead author Adam Freedman, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, said one of the most important steps was to look at gene flow between dogs and wolves after modern domestication. Among the canid species, that gene flow now appears to be more universal than previously believed.

"If you don't explicitly consider such exchanges, these admixture events get confounded with shared ancestry," Freedman said in the release. "We also found evidence for genetic exchange between wolves and jackals. The picture emerging from our analyses is that these exchanges may play an important role in shaping the diversification of canid species."