Posted on 07/06/2006 12:43:11 PM PDT by blam
Gene reveals mammoth coat colour
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Woolly mammoths had both dark and light coats
The coat colour of mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago has been determined by scientists.
Some of the curly tusked animals would have sported dark brown coats, while others had pale ginger or blond hair.
The information was extracted from a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth bone from Siberia using the latest genetic techniques.
Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said a gene called Mc1r was controlling the beasts' coat colours.
This gene is responsible for hair-colour in some modern mammals, too.
In humans, reduced activity of the Mc1r gene causes red hair, while in dogs, mice and horses it results in yellow hair.
Blond ambition
Using ancient DNA extracted from the excavated mammoth bone, the international team of researchers were able to look at the variations in copies of the Mc1r gene.
Dr Michael Hofreiter, an author on the paper and an evolutionary biologist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, said analysis revealed two different versions of the gene were present - a fully active and a partially active version.
The researchers propose that hair coloration in mammoths is likely to have been determined in the same way as in present-day mammals.
This means that mammoths with one copy of the active gene and one of the partially active gene would have had dark coats - most likely dark brown or black.
While mammoths with two copies of the inactive gene would have had paler coats - possibly blond or ginger.
Light-coloured fur camouflages mice on the beaches of Florida
The scientists said they were unsure why different-coloured mammoths existed.
Other research published in the same journal found that beach mice, whose coat colour is also controlled by the Mc1r gene, have varying colours for survival reasons.
The researchers said Florida beach mice were lighter than their mainland cousins because their pale fur helped them to hide from predators in their sand-dune habitat.
But Dr Hofreiter said it was unlikely that mammoths had varied coats for camouflage.
He said: "They were very big - so even a blond mammoth would have been easy to spot."
Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were common about 50,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene epoch.
They were about the size of an Indian elephant, but with shaggy woolly coats and tusks measuring over 4m long.
They are thought to have died out about 4,500 years ago.
GGG Ping?
Bush's fault...
From what size predator, would a wooly mammoth have needed to evolve an ability to hide?
I think early man hunted them, IIRC.
From that largest and most voracious of all predators, global cooling. Those with the lighter fur did better at the glacier edge while the darker furred animals roamed in warmer climes. /total conjecture
Then there are the animals that attack in packs. Get inside, and under the 12ft+ tusks, and it was probably
vulnerable, especially from *all* sides. I'm thinking hyenas, coyotes, etc.
Actually, you amy be onto something. It is no accident that the color of one's skin is inversely proportional to the distance one's ancestors lived from the equator.
"From what size predator, would a wooly mammoth have needed to evolve an ability to hide?
"
Uh, humans and dire wolves and saber-toothed tigers, perhaps. Humans were the most dangerous predator of the wooly mammoth, though.
Did the light furred ones have to contend with affirmative action programs designed to aid the dark furred?
/sarcasm off
Just looking up predators on mammoths on Google, I found an interesting thing. Apparently, there was a report in Siberia in 1918 of a hunter seeing a wooly mammoth. Sounds far-fetched, but Siberia's very large, and was very sparsely populated in 1918. I suppose it could have happened.
These days, it's unlikely that any such isolated mammoth could still survive, given our satellite mapping. But...you just never know. They've only been extinct, supposedly, for a few thousand years now.
Wouldn't that be a treat?
They had cave lions 3 times the size of African lions back then. Some pretty big bears, too.
That would be the most amazing biological find of the century. That, or sasquatch/yeti.
Wasn't this already known from the frozen carcasses that have been found?
There were lions in Europe into Roman times. In Alexander the Great's time, they used to hunt them. They weren't the huge kind any more, though.
Because we nasty humans killed them off.
GGG Ping?Definitely, because I can use that joke again...
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