Paul Houk, age 10, of Youngstown, Ohio, for his question:

What were the first dogs like?

Scientists have traced the dog family back through more t: an 40 million years. Some of his earliest ancestors were like bears, some like hyenas.

The first true doggy type dog arrived about 15 million years ago. Much later, when the human family finally arrived, the world was populated with an assortment of wild dogs. Some were big wolfish fellows, others were more like coyotes and some were rather like our bushy tailed foxes. All of them were genuine members of the dog family and no one can say which one came first.