TY - JOUR

T1 - Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths

AU - van der Valk, Tom

AU - Pečnerová, Patrícia

AU - Díez-del-Molino, David

AU - Bergström, Anders

AU - Oppenheimer, Jonas

AU - Hartmann, Stefanie

AU - Xenikoudakis, Georgios

AU - Thomas, Jessica A.

AU - Dehasque, Marianne

AU - Sağlıcan, Ekin

AU - Fidan, Fatma Rabia

AU - Barnes, Ian

AU - Liu, Shanlin

AU - Somel, Mehmet

AU - Heintzman, Peter D.

AU - Nikolskiy, Pavel

AU - Shapiro, Beth

AU - Skoglund, Pontus

AU - Hofreiter, Michael

AU - Lister, Adrian M.

AU - Götherström, Anders

AU - Dalén, Love

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Temporal genomic data hold great potential for studying evolutionary processes such as speciation. However, sampling across speciation events would, in many cases, require genomic time series that stretch well back into the Early Pleistocene subepoch. Although theoretical models suggest that DNA should survive on this timescale1, the oldest genomic data recovered so far are from a horse specimen dated to 780–560 thousand years ago2. Here we report the recovery of genome-wide data from three mammoth specimens dating to the Early and Middle Pleistocene subepochs, two of which are more than one million years old. We find that two distinct mammoth lineages were present in eastern Siberia during the Early Pleistocene. One of these lineages gave rise to the woolly mammoth and the other represents a previously unrecognized lineage that was ancestral to the first mammoths to colonize North America. Our analyses reveal that the Columbian mammoth of North America traces its ancestry to a Middle Pleistocene hybridization between these two lineages, with roughly equal admixture proportions. Finally, we show that the majority of protein-coding changes associated with cold adaptation in woolly mammoths were already present one million years ago. These findings highlight the potential of deep-time palaeogenomics to expand our understanding of speciation and long-term adaptive evolution.

AB - Temporal genomic data hold great potential for studying evolutionary processes such as speciation. However, sampling across speciation events would, in many cases, require genomic time series that stretch well back into the Early Pleistocene subepoch. Although theoretical models suggest that DNA should survive on this timescale1, the oldest genomic data recovered so far are from a horse specimen dated to 780–560 thousand years ago2. Here we report the recovery of genome-wide data from three mammoth specimens dating to the Early and Middle Pleistocene subepochs, two of which are more than one million years old. We find that two distinct mammoth lineages were present in eastern Siberia during the Early Pleistocene. One of these lineages gave rise to the woolly mammoth and the other represents a previously unrecognized lineage that was ancestral to the first mammoths to colonize North America. Our analyses reveal that the Columbian mammoth of North America traces its ancestry to a Middle Pleistocene hybridization between these two lineages, with roughly equal admixture proportions. Finally, we show that the majority of protein-coding changes associated with cold adaptation in woolly mammoths were already present one million years ago. These findings highlight the potential of deep-time palaeogenomics to expand our understanding of speciation and long-term adaptive evolution.

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-021-03224-9

DO - 10.1038/s41586-021-03224-9

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 33597750

AN - SCOPUS:85101187658

VL - 591

SP - 265

EP - 269

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7849

ER -