Temporal dynamics of woolly mammoth genome erosion prior to extinction
More On Article
- "Archäologie am Berg". Public Weekend of Archaeology in Hallstatt in September.
- 2023 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS - The Rohlf Medal
- 20th anniversary of the Laboratory for scanning electron microscopy at the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science (VIAS), University Vienna, 14.11.2024, 15:00
- 3D visualization of bioerosion in archaeological bone
- A comparative archaeometric study of Late Bronze Age Black Lustrous and Red Lustrous Wheel-made wares from the Eastern Mediterranean
Dehasque, M., Morales, H.E., Díez-del-Molino, D., Pečnerová, P., Chacón-Duque, J.C., Kanellidou, F., Muller, H., Plotnikov, V., Protopopov, A., Tikhonov, A., Nikolskiy, P., Danilov, G.K., Giannì, M., van der Sluis, L., Higham, T., Heintzman, P.D., Oskolkov, N., Gilbert, M.T.P., Götherström, A., van der Valk, T., Vartanyan, S., Dalén, L., 2024. Temporal dynamics of woolly mammoth genome erosion prior to extinction. Cell 187, 3531-3540.e3513.
Summary
A number of species have recently recovered from near-extinction. Although these species have avoided the immediate extinction threat, their long-term viability remains precarious due to the potential genetic consequences of population declines, which are poorly understood on a timescale beyond a few generations. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) became isolated on Wrangel Island around 10,000 years ago and persisted for over 200 generations before becoming extinct around 4,000 years ago. To study the evolutionary processes leading up to the mammoths’ extinction, we analyzed 21 Siberian woolly mammoth genomes. Our results show that the population recovered quickly from a severe bottleneck and remained demographically stable during the ensuing six millennia. We find that mildly deleterious mutations gradually accumulated, whereas highly deleterious mutations were purged, suggesting ongoing inbreeding depression that lasted for hundreds of generations. The time-lag between demographic and genetic recovery has wide-ranging implications for conservation management of recently bottlenecked populations.