Near-intact Pleistocene bird carcass (1 Viewer)

[RSN]

Nicolas Dussex, David W. G. Stanton, Hanna Sigeman, Per G. P. Ericson, Jacquelyn Gill, Daniel C. Fisher, Albert V. Protopopov, Victoria L. Herridge, Valery Plotnikov, Bengt Hansson & Love Dalén

Biomolecular analyses reveal the age, sex and species identity of a near-intact Pleistocene bird carcass

Communications Biology volume 3, Article number: 84 (2020)

Abstract:

Ancient remains found in permafrost represent a rare opportunity to study past ecosystems. Here, we present an exceptionally well-preserved ancient bird carcass found in the Siberian permafrost, along with a radiocarbon date and a reconstruction of its complete mitochondrial genome. The carcass was radiocarbon dated to approximately 44–49 ka BP, and was genetically identified as a female horned lark. This is a species that usually inhabits open habitat, such as the steppe environment that existed in Siberia at the time. This near-intact carcass highlights the potential of permafrost remains for evolutionary studies that combine both morphology and ancient nucleic acids.

Full text:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-0806-7

 

[RafaelMatias]

Also mentioned in this other BF thread: https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=3961358#post3961358

 

[Fred Ruhe]

Fig. 1 Ancient bird carcass. The photo shows the ventral view of the c. 46 ka old bird carcass recovered from the Siberian permafrost (Photo: Love Dalén).

Fig. 2 Foot of the ancient bird carcass. Close-up of the foot of the the c. 46 ka old bird carcass recovered from the Siberian permafrost(Photo: Love Dalén).

Fred

 

[Fred Ruhe]

Fig. 3 Phylogenetic placement of the ancient horned lark. The phylogeny is inferred from the Bayesian analysis of concatenated ND2 and cytb (2034 bp) for 31 horned lark from Ghorbani et al.20. The ancient horned lark highlighted in gray. Nodes with <0.5 support should be considered collapsed.

Fred