Fossil and genomic evidence constrains the timing of bison arrival in North America
Date
2017
Authors
Froese, D.
Stiller, M.
Heintzman, P.
Reyes, A.
Zazula, G.
Soares, A.
Meyer, M.
Hall, E.
Jensen, B.
Arnold, L.
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Journal article
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017; 114(13):3457-3462
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Duane Froese, Mathias Stiller, Peter D. Heintzman, Alberto V. Reyes, Grant D. Zazula, André E. R. Soares, Matthias Meyer, Elizabeth Hall, Britta J. L. Jensen, Lee J. Arnold, Ross D. E. MacPhee and Beth Shapiro
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Abstract
The arrival of bison in North America marks one of the most successful large-mammal dispersals from Asia within the last million years, yet the timing and nature of this event remain poorly determined. Here, we used a combined paleontological and paleogenomic approach to provide a robust timeline for the entry and subsequent evolution of bison within North America. We characterized two fossil-rich localities in Canada's Yukon and identified the oldest well-constrained bison fossil in North America, a 130,000-y-old steppe bison, Bison cf. priscus We extracted and sequenced mitochondrial genomes from both this bison and from the remains of a recently discovered, ∼120,000-y-old giant long-horned bison, Bison latifrons, from Snowmass, Colorado. We analyzed these and 44 other bison mitogenomes with ages that span the Late Pleistocene, and identified two waves of bison dispersal into North America from Asia, the earliest of which occurred ∼195-135 thousand y ago and preceded the morphological diversification of North American bison, and the second of which occurred during the Late Pleistocene, ∼45-21 thousand y ago. This chronological arc establishes that bison first entered North America during the sea level lowstand accompanying marine isotope stage 6, rejecting earlier records of bison in North America. After their invasion, bison rapidly colonized North America during the last interglaciation, spreading from Alaska through continental North America; they have been continuously resident since then.
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Beginning with articles submitted in Volume 106 (2009) the author(s) retains copyright to individual articles, and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America retains an exclusive License to Publish these articles and holds copyright to the collective work.