Abstract
The giant deer, widespread in northern Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, have been classified as western Megaloceros and eastern Sinomegaceros through morphological studies. While Megaloceros's evolutionary history has been unveiled through mitogenomes, Sinomegaceros remains molecularly unexplored. Herein, we generated mitogenomes of giant deer from East Asia. We find that, in contrast to the morphological differences between Megaloceros and Sinomegaceros, they are mixed in the mitochondrial phylogeny, and Siberian specimens suggest a range contact or overlap between these two groups. Meanwhile, one deep divergent clade and another surviving until 20.1 thousand years ago (ka) were detected in northeastern China, the latter implying this area as a potential refugium during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Moreover, stable isotope analyses indicate correlations between climate-introduced vegetation changes and giant deer extinction. Our study demonstrates the genetic relationship between eastern and western giant deer and explores the promoters of their extirpation in northern East Asia.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | 108406 |
| Tidsskrift | iScience |
| Vol/bind | 26 |
| Udgave nummer | 12 |
| Antal sider | 14 |
| ISSN | 2589-0042 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2023 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:We sincerely thank Prof. Haowen Tong and Ms. Jin Chen at Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Keiichi Takahashi at Lake Biwa Museum (Japan), and Mr. Yaoqing Peng for their assistance in sampling collection and photography. We also thank Mr. Yu Chen for providing photos of Sinomegaceros. This study was supported by the high-performance computing platform of China University of Geosciences (Wuhan). B.X.: methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, and visualization. A.R.-I.: methodology, formal analysis, and investigation. J.Y.: methodology, validation, investigation, and project administration. J.H.: formal analysis and investigation. S.S.: investigation. Y.H. X.C. and M.G.: resources and investigation. L.B. S.W. Taogetongqimuge, and L.L.V.: resources. A.M.L.: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, writing – original draft, and writing – review and editing. X.L.: conceptualization, writing – original draft, supervision, and funding acquisition. G.S.: conceptualization, methodology, validation, resources, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. All authors helped with the interpretation of results and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Funding Information:
We sincerely thank Prof. Haowen Tong and Ms. Jin Chen at Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Keiichi Takahashi at Lake Biwa Museum (Japan), and Mr. Yaoqing Peng for their assistance in sampling collection and photography. We also thank Mr. Yu Chen for providing photos of Sinomegaceros. This study was supported by the high-performance computing platform of China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors