[23] In 1758, the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus published in his Systema Naturae the two-word naming of species (binomial nomenclature).

[25] Linnaeus considered the dog to be a separate species from the wolf because of its upturning tail (cauda recurvata), which is not found in any other canid.

"[31] In 1982, the first edition of Mammal Species of the World included a note under Canis lupus with the comment: "Probably ancestor of and conspecific with the domestic dog, familiaris.

[35] Mathew Crowther, Stephen Jackson, and Colin Groves disagree with Wozencraft and argue that based on ICZN Opinion 2027, a domestic animal cannot be a subspecies.

They also disagree with Crowther, based on the overlap between dogs and dingoes in their morphology, in their ability to easily hybridise with each other, and that they show the signs of domestication by both having a cranium of smaller capacity than their progenitor, the wolf.

In 2005, W. Christopher Wozencraft in the third edition of Mammal Species of the World listed under the wolf Canis lupus the subspecies dingo along with its proposed taxonomic synonyms: dingo Meyer, 1793 [domestic dog]; antarticus Kerr, 1792 [suppressed, ICZN, O.451]; australasiae Desmarest, 1820; australiae Gray, 1826; dingoides Matschie, 1915; macdonnellensis Matschie, 1915; novaehollandiae Voigt, 1831; papuensis Ramsay, 1879; tenggerana Kohlbrugge, 1896; hallstromi Troughton, 1957; harappensis Prashad, 1936.

On return to Britain, Joseph Banks commissioned George Stubbs to produce paintings based on his observations, one of which was the "Portrait of a Large Dog from New Holland" completed in 1772.

In 1788, the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay under the command of Australia's first colonial governor, Arthur Phillip, who took ownership of a dingo[60] and in his journal made a brief description with an illustration of the "Dog of New South Wales".

[57] In 1793, based on Phillip's brief description and illustration, the "Dog of New South Wales" was classified by Friedrich Meyer as Canis dingo.

[3] Johann Friedrich Blumenbach gathered together a collection from the Cook voyage[61] and in 1797 he also classified the "New Holland dog" as Canis familiaris dingo.

The Russian biologist Nicholas De Miklouho-Maclay compared the dingo with a Papuan dog specimen from Bonga Village, 25 km north of Finschhafen, on the Maclay Coast in Papua New Guinea.

These dogs are sometimes fed by their owners, but at other times can found on reefs at low tide hunting for crabs and small fish.

The Dutch physician and anthropologist Jacob Kohlbrügge noted this canid while working in the Tennger Mountains in eastern Java.

The Indian zoologist Baini Prashad noted the remains of a dog that was discovered during excavations at Harappa, in modern Pakistan.

It is described as being morphologically similar to Canis tenggerana from Java, and it had earlier been proposed that a population of early dogs had been more widespread across the region.

The specimen from the Tianluoshan archaeological site, Zhejiang province dates to 7,000 YBP and is basal to the entire haplogroup A1b lineage.

[2] Dingo bone fragments were found in a rock shelter located at Mount Burr, South Australia in a layer that was originally dated 7,000-8,500 YBP.

The next most reliable timing is based on desiccated flesh dated 2,200 YBP from Thylacine Hole, 110 km west of Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain, in southeastern Western Australia.

[73] They have lived, bred, and undergone natural selection in the wild, isolated from other canines until the arrival of European settlers, resulting in a unique canid.

[79] Based on phenotype, the same researcher proposes that in the past, dingoes were widespread across the planet, but had declined due to admixture with domestic dogs.

Dingoes were thought to exist in Australia as wild dogs, rare in New Guinea, but common in Sulawesi and in northern and central Thailand.

Relic populations were thought to occur in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Vietnam.

[19] All female dingo sequences since studied exhibit haplotype A29, which falls within the Clade A haplogroup that represents 70% of domestic dogs.

The mtDNA haplotype A29, or a mutation one step away, was found in all of the Australian dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs studied, indicating a common female ancestry.

[19][79] In 2016, a study compared the entire mtDNA genome, and 13 loci of the cell nucleus, from dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs.

The Neolithic included gene flow and the expansion of agriculture, chickens, pigs and domestic dogs – none of which reached Australia.

Similar to the wolf and the husky, the dingo possesses only two copies of this gene,[54] which provides evidence that they arose before the expansion of agriculture.

[88] Earlier studies using other genetic markers had found the indigenous Bali dog more closely aligned with the Australian dingo than to European and Asian breeds, which indicates that the Bali dog was genetically diverse with a diverse history;[92][93][94] however, only 1 per cent exhibited the maternal A29 mtDNA haplotype.

One H5 specimen from Taiwan clustered with one H60 from Australia with the indication of a common ancestor 5,000–4000 YBP and coincides with the expansion of the Daic peoples of southern China.

Gene flow from the genetically divergent Tibetan wolf forms 2% of the dingo's genome,[52] which likely represents ancient admixture in eastern Eurasia.