Scientists Use Ancient DNA to Identify Bizarre Species That Baffled Darwin

[Judi Lynn]

Ryan F. Mandelbaum
Yesterday 11:00am

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Image: Jorge Blanco


What has a body like a humpless camel, legs like a skinny rhino, and a face like the short-trunked saiga antelope? Until only recently, the accepted answer was Charles Darwin’s, and I paraphrase: “I have no idea what the hell this is.”

A team of biologists used ancient DNA to finally find this mysterious mammal a home on the evolutionary tree. The species, a creature called Macrauchenia patachonica that lived in South America before going extinct around 10,000 years ago, is genetically closest to the order containing the odd-toed ungulates that includes tapirs, rhinos and horses. But finding that relationship wasn’t easy, given the old, short segments of DNA scientists had available.

“Paleontologists until modern days have been confused by these animals,” study principal investigator Michael Hofreiter from the University of Potsdam told Gizmodo. “Reconstructing a reliable sequence from these short DNA segments with only distant relatives, that’s a challenge.”

Scientists have been aware of these fossil animals in South America since the 1830s, but the confusing combination of body part shapes have made placing them on the evolutionary tree pretty much impossible. All that famous biologist Richard Owens could gather from M. patrachonica was that it was an “ungulate,” which basically means he knew it was a hoofed mammal. That’s sort of like looking at a T. rex fossil and only being able to figure out that it’s a dinosaur.

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More:
http://gizmodo.com/scientists-use-ancient-dna-to-identify-bizarre-species-1795693727