TY - JOUR

T1 - Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China

AU - Zhang, Hucai

AU - Paijmans, Johanna L.A.

AU - Chang, Fengqin

AU - Wu, Xiaohong

AU - Chen, Guangjie

AU - Lei, Chuzhao

AU - Yang, Xiujuan

AU - Wei, Zhenyi

AU - Bradley, Daniel G.

AU - Orlando, Ludovic

AU - O’Connor, Terry

AU - Hofreiter, Michael

PY - 2013/11/8

Y1 - 2013/11/8

N2 - The domestication of cattle is generally accepted to have taken place in two independent centres: around 10,500 years ago in the Near East, giving rise to modern taurine cattle, and two millennia later in southern Asia, giving rise to zebu cattle. Here we provide firmly dated morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene management of taurine cattle in northeastern China. We describe conjoining mandibles from this region that show evidence of oral stereotypy, dated to the early Holocene by two independent 14C dates. Using Illumina high-throughput sequencing coupled with DNA hybridization capture, we characterize 15,406 bp of the mitogenome with on average 16.7-fold coverage. Phylogenetic analyses reveal a hitherto unknown mitochondrial haplogroup that falls outside the known taurine diversity. Our data suggest that the first attempts to manage cattle in northern China predate the introduction of domestic cattle that gave rise to the current stock by several thousand years.

AB - The domestication of cattle is generally accepted to have taken place in two independent centres: around 10,500 years ago in the Near East, giving rise to modern taurine cattle, and two millennia later in southern Asia, giving rise to zebu cattle. Here we provide firmly dated morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene management of taurine cattle in northeastern China. We describe conjoining mandibles from this region that show evidence of oral stereotypy, dated to the early Holocene by two independent 14C dates. Using Illumina high-throughput sequencing coupled with DNA hybridization capture, we characterize 15,406 bp of the mitogenome with on average 16.7-fold coverage. Phylogenetic analyses reveal a hitherto unknown mitochondrial haplogroup that falls outside the known taurine diversity. Our data suggest that the first attempts to manage cattle in northern China predate the introduction of domestic cattle that gave rise to the current stock by several thousand years.

KW - Biological sciences

KW - Evolution

KW - Palaeontology

U2 - 10.1038/ncomms3755

DO - 10.1038/ncomms3755

M3 - Erthygl

VL - 4

JO - Nature Communications

JF - Nature Communications

SN - 2041-1723

M1 - 2755

ER -