New findings show connections between the ancient horse populations in North America, where horses evolved, and Eurasia, where they were domesticated.
By UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA CRUZ MAY 19, 2021
Cross-posted from SciTechDaily.com »
A new study of ancient DNA from horse fossils found in North America and Eurasia shows that horse populations on the two continents remained connected through the Bering Land Bridge, moving back and forth and interbreeding multiple times over hundreds of thousands of years.
The new findings demonstrate the genetic continuity between the horses that died out in North America at the end of the last ice age and the horses that were eventually domesticated in Eurasia and later reintroduced to North America by Europeans. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Molecular Ecology and is currently available online.
“The results of this paper show that DNA flowed readily between Asia and North America during the ice ages, maintaining physical and evolutionary connectivity between horse populations across the Northern Hemisphere,” said corresponding author Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
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See also “47 Million Years Ago, Horses Were About the Size of a Labrador Dog” »
Featured Image: Ancient horses crossed over the Bering Land Bridge in both directions between North America and Asia multiple times during the Pleistocene. Credit: Illustration by Julius Csotonyi.
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