Oh, it seems you're right; I was misreading the paper. Thanks for the correction! I guess it's actually a bit muddy, but best guesses are that it's Old World i

Oh, it seems you're right; I was misreading the paper. Thanks for the correction! I guess it's actually a bit muddy, but best guesses are that it's Old World indeed. Apparently it's hard to be sure since we don't know when/where dogs were domesticated, nor whether it started in bats. So yeah, definitely did not "suddenly arrive on the scene" as I had thought. ---- If you're interested, see the paper I linked; the section "The origin of rabies lyssavirus"