Tracking The Origins Of The Cave Bear (Ursus-Spelaeus) By Mitochondrial-Dna Sequencing - Laboratoire d'écologie alpine Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Année : 1994

Tracking The Origins Of The Cave Bear (Ursus-Spelaeus) By Mitochondrial-Dna Sequencing

Résumé

The different European populations of Ursus arctos, the brown bear, were recently studied for mitochondrial DNA polymorphism. Two clearly distinct lineages (eastern and western) were found, which may have diverged approximate to 850,000 years ago. In this context, it was interesting to study the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, a species which became extinct 20,000 years ago. In this study, we have amplified and sequenced a fragment of 139-bp in the mitochondrial DNA control region of a 40,000-year-old specimen of U. spelaeus. Phylogenetic reconstructions using this sequence and the European brown bear sequences already published suggest that U. spelaeus diverged from an early offshoot of U. arctos-i.e., approximately at the same time as the divergence of the two main lineages of U. arctos. This divergence probably took place at the earliest glaciation, likely due to geographic separation during the earlier Quaternary cold periods. This result is in agreement with the paleontological data available and suggests a good correspondence between molecular and morphological data.

Mots clés

Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halsde-00281060 , version 1 (20-05-2008)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halsde-00281060 , version 1

Citer

C. Hanni, V. Laudet, D. Stehelin, P. Taberlet. Tracking The Origins Of The Cave Bear (Ursus-Spelaeus) By Mitochondrial-Dna Sequencing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1994, 91 (25), pp.12336-12340. ⟨halsde-00281060⟩
64 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More