Estimating the dwarfing rate of an extinct Sicilian elephant
| Autor: | Giulio Catalano, Carolina Di Patti, Kirsty Penkman, Sina Baleka, Michael Hofreiter, Johanna L. A. Paijmans, Adrian M. Lister, Victoria L. Herridge, Axel Barlow, Marc R. Dickinson |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Mediterranean climate Lineage (evolution) Elephants Extinction Biological DNA Mitochondrial General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Cave Animals DNA Ancient Sicily Phylogeny geography geography.geographical_feature_category Palaeoloxodon biology Fossils Phenotypic trait biology.organism_classification language.human_language Dwarfing 030104 developmental biology Ancient DNA Evolutionary biology language General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Sicilian 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Current biology : CB. 31(16) |
| ISSN: | 1879-0445 0960-9822 |
| Popis: | Summary Evolution on islands, together with the often extreme phenotypic changes associated with it, has attracted much interest from evolutionary biologists. However, measuring the rate of change of phenotypic traits of extinct animals can be challenging, in part due to the incompleteness of the fossil record. Here, we use combined molecular and fossil evidence to define the minimum and maximum rate of dwarfing in an extinct Mediterranean dwarf elephant from Puntali Cave (Sicily). 1 Despite the challenges associated with recovering ancient DNA from warm climates, 2 we successfully retrieved a mitogenome from a sample with an estimated age between 175,500 and 50,000 years. Our results suggest that this specific Sicilian elephant lineage evolved from one of the largest terrestrial mammals that ever lived 3 to an island species weighing less than 20% of its original mass with an estimated mass reduction between 0.74 and 200.95 kg and height reduction between 0.15 and 41.49 mm per generation. We show that combining ancient DNA with paleontological and geochronological evidence can constrain the timing of phenotypic changes with greater accuracy than could be achieved using any source of evidence in isolation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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