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An archaeological excavation in southern Spain has uncovered the 2000-year-old remains of a lapdog that may have been born thousands of kilometres to the east, a discovery that hints at a long-distance trade in lapdogs across the Roman world.

The first domestic dogs resembled wolves and may have been used for hunting. But by the time the Roman Empire emerged, selective breeding in Europe and Asia had begun to produce dogs in all manner of shapes and sizes 鈥� including tiny dogs that may have been similar in appearance to modern .

鈥淸Roman naturalist] Pliny the Elder says that these small dogs had medicinal uses, to relieve menstrual pain in women, for example,鈥� says Rafael Martinez S谩nchez at the University of Granada, Spain. Perhaps Pliny meant that holding a warm lapdog against the belly was soothing, he adds.

Martinez S谩nchez and his colleagues found a lapdog skeleton buried in a Roman cemetery in southern Spain. It stood about 22.5 centimetres tall at the shoulders, and it had a small skull with large eyes, rather like a modern Pekinese. Wear on the dog鈥檚 teeth shows it was an adult that was probably between 2 and 4 years old when it died. Even tinier fetal bones found inside the small skeleton suggest that the lapdog was a female and that she was pregnant when she died.

When Martinez S谩nchez and his colleagues analysed the lapdog鈥檚 bones and teeth they made a surprising discovery: she may not have been local. Carbon and oxygen isotopes locked away in her bones provide information on the environment an animal鈥檚 food and water came from, and they suggest the lapdog grew up drinking water far away from the Atlantic.

This means she was probably not born in southern Spain but somewhere to the east, says Martinez S谩nchez: perhaps Italy or even somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. Two other larger dogs buried in the same cemetery lacked this chemical signal, and appear to have been born and raised locally.

鈥淭his animal had a life significantly different from that of the other animals found in the necropolis,鈥� says Martinez S谩nchez. Its exotic origins might even hint at long-distance trade of small dogs in the Roman world, the researchers say.

There is precedent for this: Martinez S谩nchez says we know the Romans transported live wild animals 鈥� including elephants, ostriches and macaques 鈥� throughout their empire, probably so the .

Even if the lapdog was a desirable exotic pet, this didn鈥檛 save her from a grisly end. A fractured neck bone in her skeleton indicates she was killed by having her neck violently twisted and broken. She seems to have been sacrificed, perhaps following the death of her owner.

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