Cave Bear Genomics in the Paleolithic Painted Cave of Chauvet-Pont d'Arc

Résumé

Caves are reservoirs of fossils, some of which belong to species now extinct. Paleogenetics explores ancient DNA that may have survived in these fossils to better understand the phylogeny of Pleistocene species and the paleoenvironment. The Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave, which displays the earliest known human drawings, contains thousands of animal remains, setting this cave as a mine for genetic analysis. We focused on the extinct cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, and proved that Chauvet-Pont d’Arc samples still contain enough DNA for genetic studies. One of them yielded well-preserved DNA and allowed sequencing the complete cave bear mitochondrial genome. We used this molecular information to establish bear phylogeny and the tempo of Ursidae speciation. Widening our analysis to cave bears samples from Chauvet-Pont d’Arc and a closely located cave, we showed that the Pleistocene ursine population was highly homogeneous at the regional level.

Publication
Evolutionary Biology — Concepts, Molecular and Morphological Evolution