Horses have been valued for their diversity of coat colour since prehistoric times; this is especially the case since their domestication in the Caspian steppe in ~3,500 BC. Although we can assume that human preferences were not constant, we have only anecdotal information about how domestic horses were influenced by humans. Our results from genotype analyses show a significant increase in spotted coats in early domestic horses (Copper Age to Iron Age). In contrast, medieval horses carried significantly fewer alleles for these phenotypes, whereas solid phenotypes (i.e., chestnut) became dominant. This shift may have been supported because of (i) pleiotropic disadvantages, (ii) a reduced need to separate domestic horses from their wild counterparts, (iii) a lower religious prestige, or (iv) novel developments in weaponry. These scenarios may have acted alone or in combination. However, the dominance of chestnut is a remarkable feature of the medieval horse population.

No abstract

Along parts of the Hanö Bay coast in south-eastern Sweden, remains of a submerged landscape can be found down to depths of almost 25 m b.s.l. The coastal landscape was formed during two periods of lowered water levels in the Baltic Basin: the Yoldia Sea and the Initial Littorina Sea stages. In order to reconstruct the local environment and shoreline displacement during the Yoldia Sea and Ancylus Lake stages, sediment sequences were obtained at 4.5, 17.5 and 18.7 m b.s.l. Detailed bathymetric mapping was based on multi-beam echo-sounding while surveillance and sampling of tree remains and archaeological findings were performed through diving. The Yoldia Sea low-stand reached its minimum level at 24–25 m b.s.l. just before 10,800 cal. BP. During the subsequent Ancylus transgression, a slow-flowing river passed through the area, accumulating thick deposits of fine-grained organic sediments in lagoonal basins. The river was surrounded by open woodland dominated by pine. Based on successive flooding of rooted tree stumps, the transgression rate was estimated at 4 cm·yr−1, until the Ancylus high-stand was reached at 5 m b.s.l. at 10,400–10,300 cal. BP. Findings of worked aurochs and beaver bones provide evidence of human presence in the landscape and show the importance of terrestrial resources for their subsistence. These integrated palaeoecological and archaeological investigations demonstrate the importance of submerged landscapes with well-preserved sediment, wood and bone material for our understanding of southern Baltic coastal landscapes and their inhabitants during the Early Mesolithic.

The monotremes, the duck-billed platypus and the echidnas, are characterized by a number of unique morphological characteristics, which have led to the common belief that they represent the living survivors of an ancestral stock of mammals. Analysis of new data from the complete mitochondrial (mt) genomes of a second monotreme, the spiny anteater, and another marsupial, the wombat, yielded clear support for the Marsupionta hypothesis. According to this hypothesis marsupials are more closely related to monotremes than to eutherians, consistent with a basal split between eutherians and marsupials/monotremes among extant mammals. This finding was also supported by analysis of new sequences from a nuclear gene--18S rRNA. The mt genome of the wombat shares some unique features with previously described marsupial mtDNAs (tRNA rearrangement, a missing tRNA(Lys), and evidence for RNA editing of the tRNA(Asp)). Molecular estimates of genetic divergence suggest that the divergence between the platypus and the spiny anteater took place approximately 34 million years before present (MYBP), and that between South American and Australian marsupials approximately 72 MYBP.

Today there are ~56 million horses worldwide, but nearly all of them are descendants of one stallion.