英国伦敦玛丽皇后大学Laurent A. F. Frantz、澳大利亚阿德莱德大学Kieren J. Mitchell和丹麦哥本哈根大学Angela R. Perri团队合作探明了野狼是更新世犬科动物的最后残余品种。 相关论文在线发表在2021年1月13日的《自然》杂志上。

在本研究中，为了重建野狼的进化史，研究人员对从13,000年前到50,000年前亚化石遗址发现的五个基因组进行了测序。研究结果表明，尽管野狼在形态上与现存的灰太狼相似，但它们却拥有高度分化的血统，大约在570万年前就与现存的狼群分开了。与跨犬科杂交的众多例子相反，没有证据表明野狼与北美灰狼或土狼之间存在基因流动。这表明野狼是由与这些物种更新世不同的祖先进化而来。

该研究结果还支持了更新世中野狼的起源，而灰狼、土狼和野犬的祖先则是在欧亚大陆进化的，并且只在近代才在出现在北美。

据介绍，野狼被认为是美洲更新世中最常见、分布最广的大型食肉动物之一，但对它们的进化或灭绝知之甚少。

附：英文原文

Title: Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage

Author: Angela R. Perri, Kieren J. Mitchell, Alice Mouton, Sandra lvarez-Carretero, Ardern Hulme-Beaman, James Haile, Alexandra Jamieson, Julie Meachen, Audrey T. Lin, Blaine W. Schubert, Carly Ameen, Ekaterina E. Antipina, Pere Bover, Selina Brace, Alberto Carmagnini, Christian Care, Jose A. Samaniego Castruita, James C. Chatters, Keith Dobney, Mario dos Reis, Allowen Evin, Philippe Gaubert, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Graham Gower, Holly Heiniger, Kristofer M. Helgen, Josh Kapp, Pavel A. Kosintsev, Anna Linderholm, Andrew T. Ozga, Samantha Presslee, Alexander T. Salis, Nedda F. Saremi, Colin Shew, Katherine Skerry, Dmitry E. Taranenko, Mary Thompson, Mikhail V. Sablin, Yaroslav V. Kuzmin, Matthew J. Collins, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Anne C. Stone, Beth Shapiro, Blaire Van Valkenburgh, Robert K. Wayne, Greger Larson, Alan Cooper, Laurent A. F. Frantz

Issue&Volume: 2021-01-13

Abstract: Dire wolves are considered to be one of the most common and widespread large carnivores in Pleistocene America1, yet relatively little is known about their evolution or extinction. Here, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of dire wolves, we sequenced five genomes from sub-fossil remains dating from 13,000 to more than 50,000 years ago. Our results indicate that although they were similar morphologically to the extant grey wolf, dire wolves were a highly divergent lineage that split from living canids around 5.7 million years ago. In contrast to numerous examples of hybridization across Canidae2,3, there is no evidence for gene flow between dire wolves and either North American grey wolves or coyotes. This suggests that dire wolves evolved in isolation from the Pleistocene ancestors of these species. Our results also support an early New World origin of dire wolves, while the ancestors of grey wolves, coyotes and dholes evolved in Eurasia and colonized North America only relatively recently.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03082-x

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03082-x