Late Holocene spread of pastoralism coincides with endemic megafaunal extinction on Madagascar.

Recently expanded estimates for when humans arrived on Madagascar (up to approximately 10 000 years ago) highlight questions about the causes of the island's relatively late megafaunal extinctions (approximately 2000-500 years ago). Introduced domesticated animals could have contributed to extinctions, but the arrival times and past diets of exotic animals are poorly known. To conduct the first explicit test of the potential for competition between introduced livestock and extinct endemic megafauna in southern and western Madagascar, we generated new radiocarbon and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from the bone collagen of introduced ungulates (zebu cattle, ovicaprids and bushpigs, = 66) and endemic megafauna (pygmy hippopotamuses, giant tortoises and elephant birds, = 68), and combined these data with existing data from endemic megafauna ( = 282, including giant lemurs).

Genomic landscape of human diversity across Madagascar.

Although situated ∼400 km from the east coast of Africa, Madagascar exhibits cultural, linguistic, and genetic traits from both Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa. The settlement history remains contentious; we therefore used a grid-based approach to sample at high resolution the genomic diversity (including maternal lineages, paternal lineages, and genome-wide data) across 257 villages and 2,704 Malagasy individuals. We find a common Bantu and Austronesian descent for all Malagasy individuals with a limited paternal contribution from Europe and the Middle East.

Shotgun sequencing of the mitochondrial genome of the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea).

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Aldabra giant tortoise [Aldabrachelys gigantea (Schweigger, 1812): Reptilia, Testudines, Testudinidae] was sequenced using a shotgun approach on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA). This genome was 16 467 bp long and presents the typical organization found in vertebrates.