The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Posted on 05/30/2011 5:45:00 PM PDT by decimon
A DNA-based study sheds new light on the complex evolutionary history of the woolly mammoth, suggesting it mated with a completely different and much larger species.
The research, which appears in the BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, found the woolly mammoth, which lived in the cold climate of the Arctic tundra, interbred with the Columbian mammoth, which preferred the more temperate regions of North America and was some 25 per cent larger.
"There is a real fascination with the history of mammoths, and this analysis helps to contextualize its evolution, migration and ecology" says Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the departments of Anthropology and Biology at McMaster University.
Poinar and his team at the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, along with colleagues from the United States and France, meticulously sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of two Columbian mammoths, one found in the Huntington Reservoir in Utah, the other found near Rawlins, Wyoming. They compared these to the first complete mitochrondrial genome of an endemic North American woolly mammoth.
"We are talking about two very physically different 'species' here. When glacial times got nasty, it was likely that woollies moved to more pleasant conditions of the south, where they came into contact with the Columbians at some point in their evolutionary history," he says. "You have roughly 1-million years of separation between the two, with the Columbian mammoth likely derived from an early migration into North American approximately 1.5-million years ago, and their woolly counterparts emigrating to North America some 400,000 years ago."
"We think we may be looking at a genetic hybrid," says Jacob Enk, a graduate student in the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre. "Living African elephant species hybridize where their ranges overlap, with the bigger species out-competing the smaller for mates. This results in mitochondrial genomes from the smaller species showing up in populations of the larger. Since woollies and Columbians overlapped in time and space, it's not unlikely that they engaged in similar behaviour and left a similar signal."
The samples used for the analyses date back approximately 12,000 years. All mammoths became extinct approximately 10,000 years ago except for small isolated populations on islands off the coast of Siberia and Alaska.
###
Funding for this study was provided by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Research Chairs program.
An illustrated figure of the Columbian mammoth and the woolly mammoth can be found at: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/images/columbianandwooly.jpg
After the embargo is lifted, a copy of the paper can be found at: http://genomebiology.com
McMaster University, one of four Canadian universities listed among the Top 100 universities in the world, is renowned for its innovation in both learning and discovery. It has a student population of 23,000, and more than 140,000 alumni in 128 countries.
For more information, please contact:
Michelle Donovan Public Relations Manager McMaster University 905-525-9140, ext. 22869 donovam@mcmaster.ca
Wade Hemsworth Public Relations Manager McMaster University 905-525-9140, ext. 27988 hemswor@mcmaster.ca
>The Woolies weren’t Picky, happy to interbreed.
So was Obama’s Mama.<
Odumbo’s daddy was a rolling stone too. Banged an underage white girl, then went back to kenya to shag another married woman in his tribe. The obamas make the kennedys look like the Jetsons.
I'm confused. Are we speaking about Opra and Rose O'Dumptruck??
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
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Are they SURE they were happy, rather than raped by those big, bad Columbnians?
Or, maybe the Columbian cartel was trading drugs for sex? ;-')
This guy is an administrator, and no longer calls himself a biologist...I hope.
“Let me make sure I understand you officer. You want to look inside my trunk?”
Give you an example ~ salmon come in a half a dozen species that cannot interbreed. On the other hand there's a federal law regarding "endangered species" so it was determined that the salmon in each crick were a different species.
That created thousands of new "endangered species" giving enormous workloads to under-employed and under-compensated environmental attorneys.
I can only imagine this fellow believes he will get his own lawyers for free to defend each new species of extinct Mammoths he can identify.
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”
But seriously…if they bred with this other species, and had issue, wouldn’t that mean they were actually both varieties of the same species?
Buy them a couple drinks and they'd do anything.
...it was likely that woollies moved to more pleasant conditions of the south, where they came into contact with the Columbians (Colombians) at some point in their evolutionary history”
Which means Panama was up and running. This means there are remnants of woollies here in Panama.
The last woollie recorded here was John McCain.
Ya, that's science.
Was Georgia or Randolf the woolly? If one was Columbian, why did they move to Canada? Wouldnt prehistoric elephants hanging out at the USSC have made a more prominent news story?
And as you are demonstrating, not as inappropriately as one might imagine.
I will have to think over your question though
The same thing appears to be happening with Polar Bears and Alaska Brown Bears, as sea ice is lost in the Arctic, forcing the Polar Bears to spend more time on land.
So, we’re going to wind up with beige bears? ;’)
Suddenly I feel an urge to dig out Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
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