Withering Away--25,000 Years of Genetic Decline Preceded Cave Bear Extinction

Stiller, Mathias; Baryshnikov, Gennady; Bocherens, Hervé; Grandal-d’Anglade, Aurora; Hilpert, Brigitte; Münzel, Susanne C.; Pinhasi, Ron; Rabeder, Gernot; Rosendahl, Wilfried; Trinkaus, Erik; Hofreiter, Michael; Knapp, Michael

doi:10.1093/molbev/msq083

Cited by 120 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

110

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, genetic diversity in bison 8,9 , musk ox 10 and European cave bear 11 declines gradually from c . 50–30,000 calendar years ago (ka BP).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

Lorenzen

Bravo

Orlando

et al. 2011

Nature

610

579

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary remain contentious. We use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison and musk ox. We show that climate has been a major driver of population change over the past 50,000 years. However, each species responds differently to the effects of climatic shifts, habitat redistribution and human encroachment. Although climate change alone can explain the extinction of some species, such as Eurasian musk ox and woolly rhinoceros, a combination of climatic and anthropogenic effects appears to be responsible for the extinction of others, including Eurasian steppe bison and wild horse. We find no genetic signature or any distinctive range dynamics distinguishing extinct from surviving species, underscoring the challenges associated with predicting future responses of extant mammals to climate and human-mediated habitat change.

show abstract

“…For example, genetic diversity in bison 8,9 , musk ox 10 and European cave bear 11 declines gradually from c . 50–30,000 calendar years ago (ka BP).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

Lorenzen

Bravo

Orlando

et al. 2011

Nature

610

579

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (Saiki et al 1985), which allowed the retrieval of even single surviving molecules , together with the finding of aDNA molecules preserved in both soft tissues and calcified material such as bones and teeth (Hagelberg et al 1989), further advanced the field. Over the past two decades, aDNA has been shown to survive for at least a half-million years under frozen conditions (Willerslev et al 2004;Johnson et al 2007) and has been applied successfully to a range of biological questions, including reconstructing past animal population dynamics (e.g., Shapiro et al 2004;de Bruyn et al 2009;Campos et al 2010, Stiller et al 2010, paleoecosystems (e.g., Kuch et al 2002;Willerslev et al 2003Willerslev et al , 2007, and prehistoric human migrations (e.g., Gilbert et al 2008;Bramanti et al 2009;Malmstrom et al 2009;Haak et al 2010), to infer past phenotypic traits and evolutionary relationships (e.g., Rohland et al , 2010, and even to re-examine the extinction date of megafaunal species (Haile et al 2009). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

True single-molecule DNA sequencing of a pleistocene horse bone

Orlando

Ginolhac

Raghavan³

et al. 2011

Genome Res.

119

136

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Second-generation sequencing platforms have revolutionized the field of ancient DNA, opening access to complete genomes of past individuals and extinct species. However, these platforms are dependent on library construction and amplification steps that may result in sequences that do not reflect the original DNA template composition. This is particularly true for ancient DNA, where templates have undergone extensive damage post-mortem. Here, we report the results of the first ''true single molecule sequencing'' of ancient DNA. We generated 115.9 Mb and 76.9 Mb of DNA sequences from a permafrost-preserved Pleistocene horse bone using the Helicos HeliScope and Illumina GAIIx platforms, respectively. We find that the percentage of endogenous DNA sequences derived from the horse is higher among the Helicos data than Illumina data. This result indicates that the molecular biology tools used to generate sequencing libraries of ancient DNA molecules, as required for second-generation sequencing, introduce biases into the data that reduce the efficiency of the sequencing process and limit our ability to fully explore the molecular complexity of ancient DNA extracts. We demonstrate that simple modifications to the standard Helicos DNA template preparation protocol further increase the proportion of horse DNA for this sample by threefold. Comparison of Helicos-specific biases and sequence errors in modern DNA with those in ancient DNA also reveals extensive cytosine deamination damage at the 39 ends of ancient templates, indicating the presence of 39-sequence overhangs. Our results suggest that paleogenomes could be sequenced in an unprecedented manner by combining current second-and third-generation sequencing approaches.

show abstract

“…The demise of at least one of the large Pleistocene carnivores, Ursus spelaeus, has been attributed to increased competition for space from expanding human populations, especially after approximately 50 kyr B.P. (18,19). And although body decoration appears sporadically earlier (20,21), there was a marked increase in the social modification of one's appearance, especially through beads and pigments (12,22).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

Trinkaus

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The establishment of modern humans in the Late Pleistocene, subsequent to their emergence in eastern Africa, is likely to have involved substantial population increases, during their initial dispersal across southern Asia and their subsequent expansions throughout Africa and into more northern Eurasia. An assessment of younger (20–40 y) versus older (>40 y) adult mortality distributions for late archaic humans (principally Neandertals) and two samples of early modern humans (Middle Paleolithic and earlier Upper Paleolithic) provides little difference across the samples. All three Late Pleistocene samples have a dearth of older individuals compared with Holocene ethnographic/historical samples. They also lack older adults compared with Holocene paleodemographic profiles that have been critiqued for having too few older individuals for subsistence, social, and demographic viability. Although biased, probably through a combination of preservation, age assessment, and especially Pleistocene mobility requirements, these adult mortality distributions suggest low life expectancy and demographic instability across these Late Pleistocene human groups. They indicate only subtle and paleontologically invisible changes in human paleodemographics with the establishment of modern humans; they provide no support for a life history advantage among early modern humans.

show abstract

Withering Away--25,000 Years of Genetic Decline Preceded Cave Bear Extinction

Cited by 120 publications

References 17 publications

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

True single-molecule DNA sequencing of a pleistocene horse bone

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About