Abstract: To investigate the origin, evolution and genetic diversity of Chinese domestic sheep (ovis), complete D-loop sequences of 59 individuals from 7 local breeds from Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Yunnan, Ningxia and Shandong and 1 imported breed were sequenced. Haplotype diversity (Hd) and nucleotide diversity (π) among 7 Chinese sheep population were 0.996 0 and 0.030 6 averagely, which indicate genetic variance within control region of Chinese sheep is abundant. Neibour-joining tree was constructed based on 59 D-loop sequences from 8 domestic sheep populations together with previously published wild sheep sequences. It supports there are three distinct lineages (A, B and C) in Chinese sheep. Mouflon was clustered with lineage B, which showed that it had close relationship with Chinese sheep. Further medianjoining network analysis also showed three lineages were determined in Chinese sheep. The result suggests that Chinese sheep derived from three independent maternal ancestors. Analysis of mismatch distribution showed unimodal distribution of three lineages. And Fu’s test of selective neutrality revealed that three lineages were in departure from the neutrality, which the difference were significant (P<0.001). It implies three lineages of Chinese sheep ever experienced population expansion possibly.