Late Pleistocene paleoecology and phylogeography of woolly rhinoceroses

High incidence of cervical ribs indicates vulnerable condition in Late Pleistocene woolly rhinoceroses

Mammals as a rule have seven cervical vertebrae, a number that remains remarkably constant. Changes of this number are associated with major congenital abnormalities (pleiotropic effects) that are, at least in humans, strongly selected against. Recently, it was found that Late Pleistocene mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) from the North Sea have an unusually high incidence of abnormal cervical v...

Facies Analysis and Plio- Pleistocene Paleoecology

Stable isotope paleoecology of Late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age humans from the Lake Victoria basin, Kenya.

Paleoanthropologists have long argued that environmental pressures played a key role in human evolution. However, our understanding of how these pressures mediated the behavioral and biological diversity of early modern humans and their migration patterns within and out of Africa is limited by a lack of archaeological evidence associated with detailed paleoenvironmental data. Here, we present t...

Mammuthus Population Dynamics in Late Pleistocene North America: Divergence, Phylogeography, and Introgression

Citation: Enk J, Devault A, Widga C, Saunders J, Szpak P, Southon J, Rouillard J-M, Shapiro B, Golding GB, Zazula G, Froese D, Fisher DC, MacPhee RDE and Poinar H (2016) Mammuthus Population Dynamics in Late Pleistocene North America: Divergence, Phylogeography, and Introgression. Front. Ecol. Evol. 4:42. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2016.00042 Mammuthus Population Dynamics in Late Pleistocene North Ameri...

Phylogeography and pleistocene evolution in the North American black bear.

To determine the extent of phylogeographic structuring in North American black bear (Ursus americanus) populations, we examined mitochondrial DNA sequences (n = 118) and restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles (n = 258) in individuals from 16 localities. Among the bears examined, 19 lineages falling into two highly divergent clades were identified. The clades differ at 5.0% of nucleot...