En marge de la publication conjointe de notre équipe avec Stuart Fiedel, des collègues de Philadelphie ont également publié un autre commentaire technique à l’égard du même article original, où ils démontrent que les “coprolites” prétendûment humains sont bien plus probablement des restes d’excréments d’herbivores…

Conformes a leur habitude, les auteurs originaux persistent à nier l’évidence de ces nouveaux arguments, s’attachant à leurs resultats comme un anatife à son vieux pneu. C’est un choix.

Je vous laisse juges.

De mon côté, j’en ai profité pour mettre à jour la page wikipedia relative à ce gisement afin de tenir compte des ces derniers resultats.

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.
   

Il n’était prévu en 2002 qu’une édition américaine de cet ouvrage (The Fate of the Mammoth – Fossils, Myths, and History en version anglaise) paru chez Chicago University Press. Heureusement pour le lecteur francophone, cette seconde édition a été également publiée en langue française dès 2004 chez Points Science.

Vous pouvez notamment retrouver un extrait de ce livre en relation avec cette interview sur l’ADN du mammouth>

Citation

New mitochondrial data demonstrating a close relationship between Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799) and Loxodonta africana (Blumenbach, 1797).
Debruyne Régis.
2001. in The world of elephants, Proceedings of the 1st international Congress. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, pp.630-632.

Abstract

The question of the phylogenetical relationships between recent Elephantidae has been raised on morphological but also molecular grounds. Mitochondrial data (cytochrome b gene particularly) either support or question the classical scheme which associates Mammuthus primigenius with the Indian elephant, Elephas maximus Linné 1758. Recent studies depict a closer relationship between mammoth and African elephant, Loxodonta africana. We report the partial sequencing of two mitochondrial markers from a 49,000 years old Siberian mammoth. The comparison of its sequence with 10 other mammoths and with African (both bush and forest forms) and Asian elephants gives weight to this hypothesis. However, a previous study of the same specimen (Yang et al. 1996) produced a highly divergent sequence that clusters with Indian elephants. The accuracy of the two alternative sequences is evaluated and leads us to the conclusion that the woolly mammoths form the monophyletic sister-group of African elephants on molecular grounds.

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