Oldest paleogenome from the African continent tells of the extinction of the blue antelope

The museum is in Berlin.

The blue animal was related to the roan and sable animals. Only 34 years after it was first described, the last blue antelope was shot and killed, making it the only large African mammal to have died out in historical times.

The first nuclear genomes for this species were obtained from a 9,800- to 9,300-year-old fossil and a specimen from the Swedish Natural History Museum.

The results of this study can be found in the book. The oldest paleogenome comes from Africa. High temperatures in Africa make it difficult to retrieve ancient DNA.

According to the paleogeneticist at the Museum fr Natur, the population sizes of the blue antelope were low when Europeans arrived in southern Africa during the 17th century. The fossil record shows a decrease in the number of blue antelopes by the end of the last ice age.

Despite their small range and low population size, blue antelopes have been around for a long time. The end of a species that may have already been struggling due to millennia of habitat loss may have been caused by the arrival of European colonizers.

A previous study by the same team showed that the blue antelope is one of the scarcest mammal species in historical museum collections, and studies to date have only succeeded in recovering relatively small portions of DNA.

Blue turns to grey-Palaeogenomic insights into the evolutionary history and extinction of the blue antelope. 10.093/molbev

Journal information: Molecular Biology and Evolution

The Museum fr Naturkunde Berlin is located in Berlin.