New DNA Evidence Rewrites Ancient American History
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The origin of Assateague's wild horses has remained a mystery for centuries, but new genetic data supports the theory that they descended from Spanish horses marooned on the barrier island. Credit: Florida Museum photo by Jeff Gage
An abandoned Caribbean colony discovered centuries later and a case of mistaken identity in the archaeological record have colluded to rewrite the history of a barrier island off the shores of Virginia and Maryland.
When Nicolas Delsol, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, set out to analyze ancient DNA recovered from cow bones discovered in archaeological sites, these seemingly unrelated threads were woven together. Delsol wanted to know how cattle were domesticated in the Americas, and he discovered the answer in the genetic information preserved in centuries-old teeth. However, they also held a surprise.
It was a serendipitous finding," he said. I was sequencing mitochondrial DNA from fossil cow teeth for my Ph.D. and realized something was very different with one of the specimens when I analyzed the sequences."
That's because the specimen in question, a portion of an adult molar, was a horse tooth rather than a cow tooth. According to recent research published in PLOS ONE, the DNA extracted from the tooth is also the oldest ever sequenced for a domesticated horse from the Americas.
The tooth was discovered during the excavation of one of Spain's oldest colonized settlements. Puerto Real, located on the island of Hispaniola, was founded in 1507 and served as the final port of call for ships traveling from the Caribbean for decades. In the 16th century, however, widespread piracy and the expansion of illegal commerce drove the Spanish to concentrate their influence elsewhere on the island, and people were ordered to abandon Puerto Real in 1578. The abandoned settlement was razed by Spanish authorities the following year.
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