The Australian dingo is a wild dog known for its aggression

The mother of all dingoes could have been a single pregnant female which travelled to Australia 5,000 years ago.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) studied the DNA of more than 200 dingoes across Australia before forming their conclusion.

"All the dingoes have a very similar DNA type," said researcher Alan Wilton.

"Any variation we find in a population is only a single mutation away from the main type," he told a conference in Sydney on Monday.

DINGOES Australia's largest mammalian predator Strongly territorial and highly intelligent Do not bark, but can howl

The findings - by UNSW researchers together with colleagues in Sweden and Britain - suggest that all dingoes descend from a very small number of dogs or even just one female.

The prototype was likely to have been a breed of domestic dog in or near modern Indonesia.

Dogs are believed to have been brought to Australia by human migrants, as hunting animals and for food themselves.

But once in Australia, they quickly reproduced and became wild, developing into the modern dingo, Dr Wilton said.

The pure dingo is rapidly disappearing from Australia, with an estimated 80% of dingoes being hybrids.

Dr Wilton warned that unless steps were taken to protect dingoes from continued cross-breeding with domestic dogs, they could be extinct within 50 years.