Rates of Evolution in Ancient DNA from Adelie Penguins

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Lambert, DM, Ritchie, PA, Millar, CD, Holland, BR, Drummond, AJ, Baroni, C
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2002
• Subjects: Biological Sciences; Genetics; Molecular Evolution; Antarc*; Antarctica; Pygoscelis adeliae
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1068105; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11910113; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/63083

Well-preserved subfossil bones of Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae , underlieexisting and abandoned nesting colonies in Antarctica. These bones, dating backto more than 7000 years before the present, harbor some of the best-preservedancient DNA yet discovered. From 96 radiocarbon-aged bones, we report largenumbers of mitochondrial haplotypes, some of which appear to be extinct, giventhe 380 living birds sampled. We demonstrate DNA sequence evolution throughtime and estimate the rate of evolution of the hypervariable region I using aMarkov chain Monte Carlo integration and a least-squares regression analysis.Our calculated rates of evolution are approximately two to seven times higherthan previous indirect phylogenetic estimates.