Two North American fossil species of large felids, hitherto regarded as Late Cenozoic pumas (mountain lion), are in fact closely related to the living cheetah, Acinonyx, of Africa and Eurasia. A new subgenus (Miracinonyx) is proposed for the American species. Cheetahs and pumas may have had a common ancestor in the Miocene of North America.

African swine fever virus (ASFV) was first reported in eastern Europe/Eurasia in 2007. Continued spread of ASFV has placed central European countries at risk, and in 2014, ASFV was detected in Lithuania and Poland. Sequencing showed the isolates are identical to a 2013 ASFV from Belarus but differ from ASFV isolated in Georgia in 2007.

Lyme disease, caused by bacteria of the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato complex, is the most frequent tick-borne infection in Eurasia. Here, we report the complete genome sequence of the Borrelia valaisiana Tom 4006 and Borrelia afzelii Tom 3107 strains isolated from Ixodes persulcatus ticks in western Siberia.

1 Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Puebla, Mexico, 2 Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico, 3 Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany, 4 Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, Byurakan, Armenia, 5 Isaac Newton Institute of Chile in Estern Europe and Eurasia, Armenian Branch, Santiago, Chile, 6 Astronomical ...

This document is one of a series of publications sponsored by the Social Transition Team in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia on social transition issues in the Region. You may download the documents in this series from the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse website (http://dec.usaid.gov), using the Doc IDs for reference.

Before its collision with Eurasia1–5, the Indian Plate moved rapidly, at rates exceeding 140mmyr−1 for a period of 20 million years1,3–7. This motion is 50 to 100% faster than the maximum sustained rate of convergence of themain tectonic plates today8. The cause of such high rates of convergence is unclear and not reproduced by numerical models9,10. Here we show that existing geological data11,...

[1] Large topographic belts along convergent margins have been recognized with the ability to slowdown the kinematics of subduction over geologically short time periods (i.e., few Myr), because their associated gravitational spreading provides significant resistive force within the framework of plate tectonics. The record of past and present-day plate kinematics provides important constraints o...

Recent analysis of DNA extracted from two Eurasian forms of archaic human shows that more genetic variants are shared with humans currently living in Eurasia than with anatomically modern humans in sub-Saharan Africa. Although these genome-wide average measures of genetic similarity are consistent with the hypothesis of archaic admixture in Eurasia, analyses of individual loci exhibiting the si...

Recent patterns of land cover and vegetation dynamics on the Euasian continent have been linked to changes in the global carbon cycle. Our study was conducted to evaluate patterns in a 19-year record of global satellite observations of terrestrial vegetation from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) as a means to characterize major trends in both vegetation " greenness " and eco...

The duck mussel Anodonta anatina is widely distributed throughout the freshwater basins of Northern, Central, and Western Eurasia, it has a comprehensive genetic structure. This study was devoted to analysis lineages, which are defined based on COI gene sequences. Our new dataset expanded by samples from Northern Central Eurasia. It allowed us reveal high level diversity for trans-Eurasian line...