Paleogenomics and habitat modeling reveal temperate Eurasian origins of woolly rhinoceroses

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lei, Xiao-Le; Ruan, Jiaoyang; Liang, Xueyuan; Teixeira, Raquel; Zhang, Jiangyue; Gilardet, Alexandre; Zhou, Xu; Han, Yu; Zhao, Zhihan; Yue, Hai-Yan; Kozlikin, Maxim; Vasiliev, Sergey; Medvedev, Stanislav; Kruskop, Sergei; Xing, Song; Wang, Ting; Basova, Vera; Ma, Lijuan; Shi, Bohua; Shao, Qingfeng; Douka, Katerina; Shunkov, Michael; Buzhilova, Alexandra; Dalen, Love; Yu, He
• 署名单位: Peking University; Peking University; Tsinghua University; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Nanjing Institute of Geology & Paleontology, CAS; Institute of Geology & Geophysics, CAS; Institute for Basic Science - Korea (IBS); Swedish Museum of Natural History; Universidade de Lisboa; Stockholm University; Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences; Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Lomonosov Moscow State University; Lomonosov Moscow State University; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, CAS; Suihua University; Nanjing Normal University; University of Vienna; University of Vienna; Swedish Museum of Natural History
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.aed0430
• 发表日期: 2026-09-10
• 页码: 1122-1127
• 关键词: LIBRARY PREPARATION; population history; ancient; pleistocene; climate; genome; adaptation; elephants; EVOLUTION; sequence

摘要

The woolly rhinoceros was a prominent Ice Age megafaunal species, and there is limited knowledge regarding its origin and responses to past glacial cycles. We sequenced 29 mitochondrial and 14 nuclear genomes from Pleistocene specimens across Eurasia and modeled the species' habitats over the past 500,000 years. Our results suggest that its maternal genetic diversity mainly evolved in temperate Eurasia around 460 thousand to 420 thousand years ago during a prolonged glacial-interglacial transition. We found that a similar to 170-thousand-year-old East Asian individual was ancestral to all later populations, indicating East Asia as one possible origin of Late Pleistocene ancestry. We also identified the Altai region as a major climatic refugium. These findings highlight the crucial role of temperate Eurasia in the evolution of woolly rhinoceroses and the diversification of cold-adapted megafauna.