14,000-year-old woolly rhinoceros DNA extracted from wolf’s stomach
Towards the end of the last ice age, an ancient wolf feasted on a young woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis). When the wolf died, it ended up buried in Siberian permafrost for about 14,000 years until it was discovered by paleontologists in 2015. Luckily for scientists, woolly rhino tissues remained inside the wolf’s stomach. Now these genetic detectives have analyzed the woolly rhino genome and found that the species likely went extinct due to a rapid population collapse, not a slow decline due to Earth’s warming climate. The results are detailed in a study published today in the journal Genome biology and evolution.
âComplete sequencing of the genome of an Ice Age animal found in the stomach of another animal has never been done before,â Camilo ChacĂłn-Duque, study co-author and paleogenomicist at Stockholm University in Sweden, said in a statement. “Recovering the genomes of individuals that lived just before extinction is challenging, but it can provide important clues about the causes of the species’ disappearance, which may also be relevant for the conservation of endangered species today,” he said.
Frozen in time
The woolly rhinoceros lived from 5.3 million to around 8,700 years ago, in present-day Europe, North Africa and Asia. Large mammals had two large horns toward the front of the skull and a thick layer of hair. Stone Age painters frequently included the woolly rhinoceros in their works, notably in the cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont d’Arc in France, dating back around 30,000 years.
Woolly rhino DNA found inside the Ice Age wolf has been discovered in permafrost near the village of Tumat in Siberia. When scientists conducted an autopsy on the ancient wolf, they identified a small fragment of woolly rhino tissue preserved inside its stomach. Radiocarbon dating indicated the fabric was approximately 14,400 years old, making it one of the youngest woolly rhino specimens ever discovered.
Because genetic material degrades over time, it is incredibly difficult to map the genome of animals like these that died thousands of years ago. The wolf’s own DNA also further complicates the analyses.
âIt was really exciting, but also very challenging, to extract a complete genome from such an unusual sample,â added SĂłlveig GuĂ°jĂłnsdĂłttir, co-senior author of the study, who carried out the work as part of his master’s thesis at Stockholm University.
Compare genomes
To get a sense of how genomic diversity, levels of inbreeding, and harmful mutations changed during the last ice age, the team then compared the Tumat rhino genome with two other high-quality genomes from older specimens. These two specimens were older, dating back approximately 18,000 and 49,000 years.
They found no signs of genetic deterioration due to a lack of suitable mates as the woolly rhino neared extinction. This indicates that the species as a whole probably maintained a stable and relatively large population until just before its disappearance, around 8,700 years ago.
âOur analyzes showed a surprisingly stable genetic pattern, with no change in levels of inbreeding over the tens of thousands of years before the extinction of woolly rhinos,â said study co-author and paleogenomicist Edana Lord.
Additionally, there was no evidence of a long-term progressive population decline within the genome. The extinction appears to have occurred relatively quickly, probably due to global warming at the end of the Ice Age.
âOur results show that woolly rhinos had a viable population for 15,000 years after the first humans arrived in northeastern Siberia, suggesting that global warming rather than human hunting caused the extinction,â concluded Love DalĂ©n, co-author of the study and evolutionary genomicist.
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