Correction for Frantz et al., Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe
Significance Archaeological evidence indicates that domestic pigs arrived in Europe, alongside farmers from the Near East ∼8,500 y ago, yet mitochondrial genomes of modern European pigs are derived from European wild boars. To address this conundrum, we obtained mitochondrial and nuclear data from modern and ancient Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses indicate that, aside from a coat color gene, most Near Eastern ancestry in the genomes of European domestic pigs disappeared over 3,000 y as a result of interbreeding with local wild boars. This implies that pigs were not domesticated independently in Europe, yet the first 2,500 y of human-mediated selection applied by Near Eastern Ne…
Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe
International audience; Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disappeared and was replaced by haplotypes associated with European wild boars. This turnover could be accounted for by substantial gene flow from local Euro-pean wild boars, although it is also possible that European wild boars were domesticated independently without any genetic contribution from the Near East. To test these hyp…
Spatio-temporal dynamics of genetic variation in the Iberian lynx along its path to extinction reconstructed with ancient DNA
here is the tendency to assume that endangered species have been both genetically and demographically healthier in the past, so that any genetic erosion observed today was caused by their recent decline. The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) suffered a dramatic and continuous decline during the 20th century, and now shows extremely low genome- and species-wide genetic diversity among other signs of genomic erosion. We analyze ancient (N = 10), historical (N = 245), and contemporary (N = 172) samples with microsatellite and mitogenome data to reconstruct the species' demography and investigate patterns of genetic variation across space and time. Iberian lynx populations transitioned from low but …
Tracking Five Millennia of Horse Management with Extensive Ancient Genome Time Series
Summary Horse domestication revolutionized warfare and accelerated travel, trade, and the geographic expansion of languages. Here, we present the largest DNA time series for a non-human organism to date, including genome-scale data from 149 ancient animals and 129 ancient genomes (≥1-fold coverage), 87 of which are new. This extensive dataset allows us to assess the modern legacy of past equestrian civilizations. We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity. We show that the influence of Persian-related horse …