0 citations0 references

Early cave art and ancient DNA record the origin of European bison

Nature Communications2016Vol. 7(1), pp. 13158–13158

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2016 papers

Julien Soubrier, Graham Gower, Kefei Chen, Stephen M. Richards, Bastien Llamas, Kieren J. Mitchell, Simon Y. W. Ho, П. А. Косинцев, Michael S. Y. Lee, Gennady Baryshnikov, Ruth Bollongino, Pere Rosselló Bover, Joachim Bürger, David Chivall, Évelyne Crégut-Bonnoure, Jared E. Decker, Vladimir B. Doronichev, Katerina Douka, Damien A. Fordham, Federica Fontana, Carole Fritz, Jan Glimmerveen, Liubov V. Golovanova, Colin Groves, Antonio Guerreschi, Wolfgang Haak, Thomas Higham, Emilia Hofman‐Kamińska, Alexander Immel, Marie-Anne Julien, Johannes Krause, Oleksandra Krotova, Frauke Langbein, Greger Larson, Adam B. Rohrlach, Amelie Scheu, Robert D. Schnabel, Jeremy F. Taylor, Małgorzata Tokarska, Gilles Tosello, J. van der Plicht, Ayla L. van Loenen, Jean‐Denis Vigne, Oliver Wooley, Ludovic Orlando, Rafał Kowalczyk, Beth Shapiro, Alan Cooper

Abstract

The two living species of bison (European and American) are among the few terrestrial megafauna to have survived the late Pleistocene extinctions. Despite the extensive bovid fossil record in Eurasia, the evolutionary history of the European bison (or wisent, Bison bonasus) before the Holocene (<11.7 thousand years ago (kya)) remains a mystery. We use complete ancient mitochondrial genomes and genome-wide nuclear DNA surveys to reveal that the wisent is the product of hybridization between the extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus) and ancestors of modern cattle (aurochs, Bos primigenius) before 120 kya, and contains up to 10% aurochs genomic ancestry. Although undetected within the fossil record, ancestors of the wisent have alternated ecological dominance with steppe bison in association with major environmental shifts since at least 55 kya. Early cave artists recorded distinct morphological forms consistent with these replacement events, around the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ∼21-18 kya).

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2016 papers

Abstract

Related Papers