ALBERT

Description: No large group of recently extinct placental mammals remains as evolutionarily cryptic as the approximately 280 genera grouped as 'South American native ungulates'. To Charles Darwin, who first collected their remains, they included perhaps the 'strangest animal[s] ever discovered'. Today, much like 180 years ago, it is no clearer whether they had one origin or several, arose before or after the Cretaceous/Palaeogene transition 66.2 million years ago, or are more likely to belong with the elephants and sirenians of superorder Afrotheria than with the euungulates (cattle, horses, and allies) of superorder Laurasiatheria. Morphology-based analyses have proved unconvincing because convergences are pervasive among unrelated ungulate-like placentals. Approaches using ancient DNA have also been unsuccessful, probably because of rapid DNA degradation in semitropical and temperate deposits. Here we apply proteomic analysis to screen bone samples of the Late Quaternary South American native ungulate taxa Toxodon (Notoungulata) and Macrauchenia (Litopterna) for phylogenetically informative protein sequences. For each ungulate, we obtain approximately 90% direct sequence coverage of type I collagen alpha1- and alpha2-chains, representing approximately 900 of 1,140 amino-acid residues for each subunit. A phylogeny is estimated from an alignment of these fossil sequences with collagen (I) gene transcripts from available mammalian genomes or mass spectrometrically derived sequence data obtained for this study. The resulting consensus tree agrees well with recent higher-level mammalian phylogenies. Toxodon and Macrauchenia form a monophyletic group whose sister taxon is not Afrotheria or any of its constituent clades as recently claimed, but instead crown Perissodactyla (horses, tapirs, and rhinoceroses). These results are consistent with the origin of at least some South American native ungulates from 'condylarths', a paraphyletic assembly of archaic placentals. With ongoing improvements in instrumentation and analytical procedures, proteomics may produce a revolution in systematics such as that achieved by genomics, but with the possibility of reaching much further back in time.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Welker, Frido -- Collins, Matthew J -- Thomas, Jessica A -- Wadsley, Marc -- Brace, Selina -- Cappellini, Enrico -- Turvey, Samuel T -- Reguero, Marcelo -- Gelfo, Javier N -- Kramarz, Alejandro -- Burger, Joachim -- Thomas-Oates, Jane -- Ashford, David A -- Ashton, Peter D -- Rowsell, Keri -- Porter, Duncan M -- Kessler, Benedikt -- Fischer, Roman -- Baessmann, Carsten -- Kaspar, Stephanie -- Olsen, Jesper V -- Kiley, Patrick -- Elliott, James A -- Kelstrup, Christian D -- Mullin, Victoria -- Hofreiter, Michael -- Willerslev, Eske -- Hublin, Jean-Jacques -- Orlando, Ludovic -- Barnes, Ian -- MacPhee, Ross D E -- England -- Nature. 2015 Jun 4;522(7554):81-4. doi: 10.1038/nature14249. Epub 2015 Mar 18.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉1] BioArCh, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK [2] Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; BioArCh, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK. ; Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK. ; Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Oster Voldgade 5-7, 1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark. ; Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London NW1 4RY, UK. ; CONICET- Division Paleontologia de Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Paseo del Bosque s/n, B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina. ; Seccion Paleontologia de Vertebrados. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia", 470 Angel Gallardo Av., C1405DJR, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ; Institute of Anthropology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Anselm-Franz-von-Bentzel-Weg 7, D-55128 Mainz, Germany. ; Department of Chemistry, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK. ; Bioscience Technology Facility, Department of Biology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK. ; Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA. ; Target Discovery Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7FZ, UK. ; Applications Development, Bruker Daltonik GmbH, 28359 Bremen, Germany. ; Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3b, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark. ; Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK. ; Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ; 1] BioArCh, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK [2] Institute for Biochemistry and Biology, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam OT Golm, Germany. ; Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Department of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York 10024, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25799987" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Previous research suggests that people first arrived on Madagascar by ~2500 years before present (years B.P.). This hypothesis is consistent with butchery marks on extinct lemur bones from ~2400 years B.P. and perhaps with archaeological evidence of human presence from ~4000 years B.P. We report 〉10,500-year-old human-modified bones for the extinct elephant birds Aepyornis and Mullerornis , which show perimortem chop marks, cut marks, and depression fractures consistent with immobilization and dismemberment. Our evidence for anthropogenic perimortem modification of directly dated bones represents the earliest indication of humans in Madagascar, predating all other archaeological and genetic evidence by 〉6000 years and changing our understanding of the history of human colonization of Madagascar. This revision of Madagascar’s prehistory suggests prolonged human-faunal coexistence with limited biodiversity loss.

Description: Although all extant apes are threatened with extinction, there is no evidence for human-caused extinctions of apes or other primates in postglacial continental ecosystems, despite intensive anthropogenic pressures associated with biodiversity loss for millennia in many regions. Here, we report a new, globally extinct genus and species of gibbon, Junzi imperialis , described from a partial cranium and mandible from a ~2200- to 2300-year-old tomb from Shaanxi, China. Junzi can be differentiated from extant hylobatid genera and the extinct Quaternary gibbon Bunopithecus by using univariate and multivariate analyses of craniodental morphometric data. Primates are poorly represented in the Chinese Quaternary fossil record, but historical accounts suggest that China may have contained an endemic ape radiation that has only recently disappeared.

Description: Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), an important component of the modern conservation toolkit, is being eroded in indigenous communities around the world. However, the dynamics of TEK loss in response to ecosystem change and disruption to social–ecological systems, and patterns of variation in vulnerability and resilience of different components of TEK, remain poorly understood. The Hainan gibbon ( Nomascus hainanus ), a culturally significant primate, was formerly distributed across Hainan Island, China, but became extinct across most of this range within living memory and is now restricted to a single landscape, Bawangling National Nature Reserve. Gibbon-specific TEK (including folktales, natural history information and methods of gibbon exploitation) is still present in indigenous communities across seven Hainanese landscapes, but statistically significant differences in TEK content exist between landscapes with different histories of gibbon persistence: respondents from Bawangling and most landscapes that have recently lost gibbons report more gibbon-related folktales compared with landscapes from which gibbons have been absent for several decades. Species-specific folktales might have been lost more rapidly compared with other components of TEK because older community members are typically the ‘cultural repositories’ of stories, whereas knowledge about practical interactions with biodiversity might be shared more widely with younger community members.

Description: Determining the ‘dynamic biogeography’ of range collapse in threatened species is essential for effective conservation, but reconstruction of spatio-temporal patterns of population vulnerability and resilience can require use of non-standard ecological data such as historical archives. Père David's deer or milu, one of the few living mammal species that has become extinct in the wild, is historically known only from a small captive herd of unknown provenance that survived until 1900 in the Imperial Hunting Park near Beijing, from which all living individuals are descended. Using ancient DNA analysis, we demonstrate that two fawns collected in 1868 from Hainan Island, off the southern Chinese mainland, represent the only known wild milu specimens and were sampled from probably the last wild population. The Hainan milu population shows extremely low genetic differentiation from descendants of the Beijing herd, suggesting that this now-extinct population may have been the source of the captive herd. This revised extinction model refutes the supposed long-term survival of a captive milu herd for centuries or millennia after final extinction of wild populations, highlighting the vulnerability of remnant mammal populations in the absence of proactive management and the importance of historical museum collections for providing unique new insights on evolution, biogeography and conservation. Milu experienced a pattern of final population persistence on an island at the periphery of their former range, consistent with the ‘range eclipse’ or ‘contagion’ model of range collapse, and matching the spatial extinction dynamics of other extinct mammals such as the thylacine and woolly mammoth.

Description: The mammalian evolutionary tree has lost several major clades through recent human-caused extinctions. This process of historical biodiversity loss has particularly affected tropical island regions such as the Caribbean, an area of great evolutionary diversification but poor molecular preservation. The most enigmatic of the recently extinct endemic Caribbean mammals are the Nesophontidae, a family of morphologically plesiomorphic lipotyphlan insectivores with no consensus on their evolutionary affinities, and which constitute the only major recent mammal clade to lack any molecular information on their phylogenetic placement. Here, we use a palaeogenomic approach to place Nesophontidae within the phylogeny of recent Lipotyphla. We recovered the near-complete mitochondrial genome and sequences for 17 nuclear genes from a ~750-year-old Hispaniolan Nesophontes specimen, and identify a divergence from their closest living relatives, the Solenodontidae, more than 40 million years ago. Nesophontidae is thus an older distinct lineage than many extant mammalian orders, highlighting not only the role of island systems as "museums" of diversity that preserve ancient lineages, but also the major human-caused loss of evolutionary history.

Description: Madagascar's now-extinct radiation of large-bodied ratites, the elephant birds (Aepyornithidae), has been subject to little modern research compared to the island's mammalian megafauna and other Late Quaternary giant birds. The family's convoluted and conflicting taxonomic history has hindered accurate interpretation of morphological diversity and has restricted modern research into their evolutionary history, biogeography and ecology. We present a new quantitative analysis of patterns of morphological diversity of aepyornithid skeletal elements, including material from all major global collections of aepyornithid skeletal remains, and constituting the first taxonomic reassessment of the family for over 50 years. Linear morphometric data collected from appendicular limb elements, and including nearly all type specimens, were examined using multivariate cluster analysis and the Bayesian information criterion, and with estimation of missing data using multiple imputation and expectation maximization algorithms. These analyses recover three distinct skeletal morphotypes within the Aepyornithidae. Two of these morphotypes are associated with the type specimens of the existing genera Mullerornis and Aepyornis , and represent small-bodied and medium-bodied aepyornithids, respectively. Aepyornis contains two distinct morphometric subgroups, which are identified as the largely allopatric species A. hildebrandti and A. maximus. The third morphotype, which has not previously been recognized as a distinct genus, is described as the novel taxon Vorombe titan . Vorombe represents the largest-bodied aepyornithid and is the world's largest bird, with a mean body mass of almost 650 kg. This new taxonomic framework for the Aepyornithidae provides an important new baseline for future studies of avian evolution and the Quaternary ecology of Madagascar.

Description: How does past evolutionary performance impact future evolutionary performance? This is an important question not just for macroevolutionary biologists who wish to chart the phenomena that describe deep-time changes in biodiversity but also for conservation biologists, as evolutionarily distinct species—which may be deemed ‘low-performing’ in our current era—are increasingly the focus of conservation efforts. Contrasting hypotheses exist to account for the history and future of evolutionarily distinct species: on the one hand, they may be relicts of large radiations, potentially ‘doomed’ to extinction; or they may be slow-evolving, ‘living fossils’, likely neither to speciate nor go extinct; or they may be seeds of future radiations. Here, we attempt to test these hypotheses in Mammalia by combining a molecular phylogenetic supertree with fossil record occurrences and measuring change in evolutionary distinctness (ED) at different time slices. With these time slices, we modelled future ED as a function of past ED. We find that past evolutionary performance does indeed have an impact on future evolutionary performance: the most evolutionarily isolated clades tend to become more evolutionarily distinct with time, indicating that low-performing clades tend to remain low-performing throughout their evolutionary history. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The past is a foreign country: how much can the fossil record actually inform conservation?’