Elephant Stone

Citation

Out of America: Ancient DNA Evidence for a New World Origin of Late Quaternary Woolly Mammoths.
Régis Debruyne, G. Chu, C.E. King,  K. Bos,  M. Kuch,  C. Schwarz,  P. Szpak,  D.R. Gröcke,  P. Matheus,  G. Zazula,  D. Guthrie,  D. Froese,  B. Buigues,  C. de Marliave,  C. Flemming,  D. Poinar,  D. Fisher,  J. Southon,  A.N. Tikhonov,  R.D.E. MacPhee,  H.N. Poinar.
Current Biology 2008, 18(17):1320-1326.

Abstract

Although the iconic mammoth of the Late Pleistocene, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), has traditionally been regarded as the end point of a single anagenetically evolving lineage, recent paleontological and molecular studies have shown that successive allopatric speciation events must have occurred within Pleistocene Mammuthus in Asia, with subsequent expansion and hybridization between nominal taxa. However, the role of North American mammoth populations in these events has not been adequately explored from an ancient-DNA standpoint. To undertake this task, we analyzed mtDNA from a large data set consisting of mammoth samples from across Holarctica (n = 160) and representing most of radiocarbon time. Our evidence shows that, during the terminal Pleistocene, haplotypes originating in and characteristic of New World populations replaced or succeeded those endemic to Asia and western Beringia. Also, during the Last Glacial Maximum, mammoth populations do not appear to have suffered an overall decline in diversity, despite differing responses on either side of the Bering land bridge. In summary, the “Out-of-America” hypothesis holds that the dispersal of North American woolly mammoths into other parts of Holarctica created major phylogeographic structuring within Mammuthus primigenius populations, shaping the last phase of their evolutionary history before their demise.

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Cet article est cité par:

1. Hofreiter & Stewart 2009. Ecological Change, Range Fluctuations and Population Dynamics during the Pleistocene. Current Biology 19(14).
2. Jake E Enk et al., “Phylogeographic analysis of the mid-Holocene Mammoth from Qagnax̂ Cave, St. Paul Island, Alaska,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 273, no. 1-2 (2009): 184-190.
3. Régis Debruyne et Hendrik N. Poinar, “Time Dependency of Molecular Rates in Ancient DNA Data Sets, A Sampling Artifact?,” Systematic Biology 58, no. 3 (7, 2009): 348-360.
   

Publications adn ancien, Mammuthus, phylogéographie