'Higgs Bison' Is The Missing Link In European Bison Ancestral Tree

Source: NPR

'Higgs Bison' Is The Missing Link In European Bison Ancestral Tree

October 18, 201611:48 AM ET
REBECCA HERSHER

For a decade, people who study Europe's bison population have been baffled by a genetic mystery. The animals, which are a protected species, seemed to have appeared out of thin air about 11,000 years ago.

"There's something very fishy in the history of European bovids," says Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide, one of the lead authors of a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Before 11,000 years ago, all the bison in Europe were thought to be of a variety called steppe bison, which ranged all the way across what is now Russia into Alaska and the North American mainland during the last Ice Age.

But shortly after the steppe bison disappeared from the fossil record, the European bison suddenly appears. And even stranger, its mitochondrial DNA (which is only inherited from the maternal side) shows the new species is very closely related to cows.

"That was misleading for a long time," Cooper says in a video about the new research. "There were these two different species that did not overlap." The key to how the cow genes ended up in modern bison was contained inside bone fragments from ancient bison found in caves across Europe, including the famous Lascaux cave in France.

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Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/18/498281083/higgs-bison-is-the-missing-link-in-european-bison-ancestral-tree

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Related: Early cave art and ancient DNA record the origin of European bison (Nature Communications)



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Source: CBC News

DNA reveals the Higgs bison, a hybrid Ice Age species depicted in ancient cave art

Unexpected crossbreed believed to be ancestor of the European bison

CBC News Posted: Oct 18, 2016 11:35 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 18, 2016 1:53 PM ET

Using DNA analysis, researchers have discovered that an unexpected hybrid of cattle and bison once roamed the Earth.

The 120,000-year-old species was a cross-breed of the aurochs, the ancestor of modern cattle, and the Ice Age steppe bison, ancestors of the modern American bison or buffalo.

"Finding that a hybridisation event led to a completely new species was a real surprise — as this isn't really meant to happen in mammals," Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide and leader of the study, said in a release.

It was such a surprise, in fact, that when researchers first noticed a distinctive genetic signal from many bison fossils, they weren't entirely certain it was a different species.

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Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/higgs-bison-dna-cave-art-1.3809728