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Evolutionary and phylogenetic insights from a nuclear genome sequence of the extinct, giant, "subfossil" koala lemur .
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
June 2021
Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802;
No endemic Madagascar animal with body mass >10 kg survived a relatively recent wave of extinction on the island. From morphological and isotopic analyses of skeletal "subfossil" remains we can reconstruct some of the biology and behavioral ecology of giant lemurs (primates; up to ∼160 kg) and other extraordinary Malagasy megafauna that survived into the past millennium. Yet, much about the evolutionary biology of these now-extinct species remains unknown, along with persistent phylogenetic uncertainty in some cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAncient mitogenomics clarifies radiation of extinct Mascarene giant tortoises (Cylindraspis spp.).
Sci Rep
November 2019
Museum of Zoology, Senckenberg Dresden, A. B. Meyer Building, 01109, Dresden, Germany.
Article Synopsis
- The extinct giant tortoises of the genus Cylindraspis are key to understanding the unique wildlife of the Mascarene Islands, which largely disappeared after human discovery.
- Researchers analyzed 45 mitogenomes from various tortoise lineages, revealing that Cylindraspis is an ancient group that diverged as early as the late Eocene and began diversifying in the mid-Oligocene, long before the Mascarene Islands formed.
- The findings suggest that Cylindraspis likely originated from now-submerged islands near Réunion and migrated to the Mascarenes, contradicting theories of human involvement or recent arrival from other continents.
An 11 000-year-old giant muntjac subfossil from Northern Vietnam: implications for past and present populations.
R Soc Open Sci
March 2019
School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast, Elmwood Avenue, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK.
Described at the end of the twentieth century, the large-antlered or giant muntjac, (syn), is a Critically Endangered species currently restricted to the Annamite region in Southeast Asia. Here we report subfossil evidence of giant muntjac, a mandible fragment dated between 11.1 and 11.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResolving the phylogenetic position of Darwin's extinct ground sloth () using mitogenomic and nuclear exon data.
Proc Biol Sci
May 2018
McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
is the extinct giant ground sloth named after Charles Darwin, who first collected its remains in South America. We have successfully obtained a high-quality mitochondrial genome at 99-fold coverage using an Illumina shotgun sequencing of a 12 880-year-old bone fragment from Mylodon Cave in Chile. Low level of DNA damage showed that this sample was exceptionally well preserved for an ancient subfossil, probably the result of the dry and cold conditions prevailing within the cave.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn avian seed dispersal paradox: New Zealand's extinct megafaunal birds did not disperse large seeds.
Proc Biol Sci
April 2018
Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
Often the mutualistic roles of extinct species are inferred based on plausible assumptions, but sometimes palaeoecological evidence can overturn such inferences. We present an example from New Zealand, where it has been widely assumed that some of the largest-seeded plants were dispersed by the giant extinct herbivorous moa (Dinornithiformes). The presence of large seeds in preserved moa gizzard contents supported this hypothesis, and five slow-germinating plant species () with thick seedcoats prompted speculation about whether these plants were adapted for moa dispersal.
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