Studying the genome of an extinct species using predator feces? This challenge is being addressed by scientists who have made great strides in our knowledge of the woolly rhinoceros, a prehistoric mammal.
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[EN VIDÉO] A young woolly rhinoceros was discovered almost intact in Siberia. A Russian discovered the remains of a young woolly rhinoceros in the Siberian permafrost. Her…
Scientific progress sometimes takes unclear paths, as the discovery of European woolly rhinoceros DNA in the fossilized scat – or coprolites – of cave hyenas proves! A find that allowed researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany to reconstruct the mitochondrial genome of this species, which disappeared about 10,000 years ago under still mysterious circumstances. The mitochondrial genome is passed down only from the mother and allows us to trace the genetic thread back to the origin of the species.
A great scientific advance
This significant discovery, made by chance while scientists were trying to identify the DNA of plants, was intended to shed light on the origins of the division of woolly rhinos into two groups: European and Siberian. This is all the more extraordinary because it is the first time that scientists have been confronted with a genome from the European group. The cause: higher temperatures in Europe than in the Siberian permafrost, which further degrade DNA. There is also technical skill: To distinguish the woolly rhinoceros’ genetic material from that of the hyena that ate it and from whatever was in its stomach, scientists used, among other things, a DNA sequencer. The extract they were able to isolate had degraded. They compared it to other modern and ancient genomes to restore it.
Many promises lie dormant in petrified feces
Their analysis, published in the journal Biology Letters, shows that woolly rhinos split into two groups 450,000 years ago. In addition to this advance, our two fertilizers, which date to the Middle Paleolithic (between 300,000 and 30,000 BC), contain a variety of other resources that could shed light on the environment in which the region’s Neanderthals lived. Although the researchers are cautious in their conclusion, remembering that this is an isolated sample, their results still suggest that there may be a wealth of information hidden in the coprolites that has previously been ignored by science became.