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

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).

SUBMITTER: Soubrier J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5071849 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Soubrier Julien J Gower Graham G Chen Kefei K Richards Stephen M SM Llamas Bastien B Mitchell Kieren J KJ Ho Simon Y W SY Kosintsev Pavel P Lee Michael S Y MS Baryshnikov Gennady G Bollongino Ruth R Bover Pere P Burger Joachim J Chivall David D Crégut-Bonnoure Evelyne E Decker Jared E JE Doronichev Vladimir B VB Douka Katerina K Fordham Damien A DA Fontana Federica F Fritz Carole C Glimmerveen Jan J Golovanova Liubov V LV Groves Colin C Guerreschi Antonio A Haak Wolfgang W Higham Tom T Hofman-Kamińska Emilia E Immel Alexander A Julien Marie-Anne MA Krause Johannes J Krotova Oleksandra O Langbein Frauke F Larson Greger G Rohrlach Adam A Scheu Amelie A Schnabel Robert D RD Taylor Jeremy F JF Tokarska Małgorzata M Tosello Gilles G van der Plicht Johannes J van Loenen Ayla A Vigne Jean-Denis JD Wooley Oliver O Orlando Ludovic L Kowalczyk Rafał R Shapiro Beth B Cooper Alan A

Nature communications 20161018

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 e ...[more]

PMID: 27754477

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Project description:In Europe, the Neolithic transition (8,000-4,000 B.C.) from hunting and gathering to agricultural communities was one of the most important demographic events since the initial peopling of Europe by anatomically modern humans in the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 B.C.). However, the nature and speed of this transition is a matter of continuing scientific debate in archaeology, anthropology, and human population genetics. To date, inferences about the genetic make up of past populations have mostly been drawn from studies of modern-day Eurasian populations, but increasingly ancient DNA studies offer a direct view of the genetic past. We genetically characterized a population of the earliest farming culture in Central Europe, the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK; 5,500-4,900 calibrated B.C.) and used comprehensive phylogeographic and population genetic analyses to locate its origins within the broader Eurasian region, and to trace potential dispersal routes into Europe. We cloned and sequenced the mitochondrial hypervariable segment I and designed two powerful SNP multiplex PCR systems to generate new mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal data from 21 individuals from a complete LBK graveyard at Derenburg Meerenstieg II in Germany. These results considerably extend the available genetic dataset for the LBK (n = 42) and permit the first detailed genetic analysis of the earliest Neolithic culture in Central Europe (5,500-4,900 calibrated B.C.). We characterized the Neolithic mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity and geographical affinities of the early farmers using a large database of extant Western Eurasian populations (n = 23,394) and a wide range of population genetic analyses including shared haplotype analyses, principal component analyses, multidimensional scaling, geographic mapping of genetic distances, and Bayesian Serial Simcoal analyses. The results reveal that the LBK population shared an affinity with the modern-day Near East and Anatolia, supporting a major genetic input from this area during the advent of farming in Europe. However, the LBK population also showed unique genetic features including a clearly distinct distribution of mitochondrial haplogroup frequencies, confirming that major demographic events continued to take place in Europe after the early Neolithic.

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

Publications

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

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