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Published online 9 June 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.881
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Woolly mammoth family tree grows a new branch
Two bands of woolly brothers roamed the Siberian snows.
Wandering the snowy plains of Siberia up to 40,000 years ago lived not one, but two groups of long-haired and curly-tusked woolly mammoth, side by side.
An international team led by Thomas Gilbert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark has sequenced five new complete genomes of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius).
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The statement that "the two groups had quite different tendencies to roam" may be completely unfounded. Since the wider ranging clade apparently had an additional 30,000 years to "roam" during a period that may have been climatically and ecologically variable. Then their wider range may have been solely in response to varying conditions during the additional 30,000 years. Thus, there may have been no differences in the clades in terms of either greater adaptive abilities to exploit a broader range of habitats (allowing more roaming), or in inhertited behavioural tendencies to roam. I also wonder if the earlier disappearance of one clade could have been due to a severe disturbance event (e.g., winter icing) that ended that specific matriarchal line from its home range. If the surviving clade escaped the consequences of the event simply by being in a different place during the event, then the earlier extinction of one clade may have had nothing to do with a difference in selective resilience. It would take several perhaps unjustified assumptions to make any comments of the significance of these genetic clades in terms of behaviour or selective advantage, which the article seems to imply. The genetic differences between the clades may not be linked in any way to phenotypic expression in terms of behaviour, or selective advantage relative to the apparently unknown and variable ecological conditions that they endured. Mike Ferguson
'Wider range' versus 'not as wide' is a function of sampling not an anthropologic statement. Longitudinal survival whether cause, effect or serendipity does not appear to be what is addressed as much as clade distinctions over broader versus less broad geography. I see no implications beyond these.