A genetic glimpse of the Chinese straight-tusked elephants

• Published in: Biology letters (2005) 2023-07, Vol.19 (7), p.20230078
• Main Authors: Lin, Haifeng, Hu, Jiaming, Baleka, Sina, Yuan, Junxia, Chen, Xi, Xiao, Bo, Song, Shiwen, Du, Zhicheng, Lai, Xulong, Hofreiter, Michael, Sheng, Guilian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Biological Evolution; DNA, Mitochondrial - genetics; Elephants - genetics; Evolutionary Biology; Fossils; Phylogeny; Phylogeography
• ISSN: 1744-957X; 1744-9561; 1744-957X
• DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2023.0078

Straight-tusked elephants (genus: ) including their island dwarf forms are extinct enigmatic members of the Pleistocene megafauna and the most common Pleistocene elephants after the mammoths. Their taxonomic placement has been revised several times. Using palaeogenomic evidence, previous studies suggested that the European has a hybrid origin, but no molecular data have been retrieved from their Asian counterparts, leaving a gap in our knowledge of the global phylogeography and population dynamics of . Here, we captured a high-quality complete mitogenome from a Pleistocene Elephantidae molar (CADG841) from Northern China, which was previously morphologically assigned to the genus (Asian elephant), and partial mitochondrial sequences (838 bp) of another sp specimen (CADG1074) from Northeastern China. We found that both Chinese specimens cluster with a 244 000-year-old (specimen name: WE) from Western Europe, suggesting that this clade may represent a population with a large spatial span across Eurasia. Based on the fossil record and the molecular dating of both the divergences of different mitochondrial clades and previously determined hybridization events, we propose that this Eurasian-wide WE clade provides evidence for an earlier migration and/or another hybridization event that happened in the evolutionary history of straight-tusked elephants.