Chinese Study: The Norske Camel May Have Accelerated Towards Extinction Due to "Picky Eating"

After Chinese scientific researchers conducted research on the ancient genomes of the extinct Norske Camel, they revealed the complexity of the evolutionary history of Old World camelids. It was found that the Norske Camel accelerated towards extinction during the Last Glacial Maximum due to its "picky eating." According to a report by Xinhua News Agency, scientific researchers from China University of Geosciences, in collaboration with the National Museum of China, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and other institutions, jointly conducted research on issues such as "Why did the Norske Camel, which has a cross-kinship with the extant Bactrian camel, go extinct at the end of the Late Pleistocene?" It was found that "picky eating" may be one of the main reasons leading to the accelerated extinction of the Norske Camel. Professor Sheng Guilian, one of the corresponding authors of the paper, introduced that camels have strong tolerance to arid and harsh climatic environments and are ideal species for the academic community to explore biological environmental adaptability. Their evolutionary history has always attracted much attention. Since the late Early Pleistocene, the camels distributed on the Eurasian continent have mainly consisted of the extant dromedary, domestic Bactrian camel, wild Bactrian camel, and the extinct Norske Camel, which is a Bactrian camel. The research team obtained the complete mitochondrial genomes and partial nuclear genomes of seven Norske Camel fossil materials from the Late Pleistocene in Northeast China. They carried out interdisciplinary analysis by using the genetic data of extinct and extant species of camelids, combined with morphological, chronological, and stable isotope data, and analyzed the possible gene flow between the Norske Camel and the ancestral population of extant Bactrian camels. It was found that in the evolutionary history of camelids, there was extensive gene flow among different species of Bactrian camels on the Eurasian continent. The evolutionary relationship between the Norske Camel and the domestic Bactrian camel and the wild Bactrian camel cannot be stereotypically summarized as a simple bifurcating tree. It is speculated that it should be a reticular structure, and its evolutionary history is more complex than the existing knowledge in the academic community. Through carbon isotope analysis of Norske Camel samples, the researchers found that over time, the diet of the Norske Camel changed little, and its dietary habits were relatively single, showing that it was quite "picky about food." Compared with extant domestic Bactrian camels and wild Bactrian camels, the Norske Camel had lower nucleotide diversity. This may reflect that the Norske Camel population had already shrunk during the Marine Isotope Stage 3. The severe climatic environment of the subsequent Last Glacial Maximum became the "last straw" that crushed the Norske Camel and greatly accelerated its extinction process. The research results were recently published online in the renowned international academic journal Current Biology. [1]. 《 Lianhe Zaobao 》 . 中国研究：诺氏驼或因“挑食”加速走向灭绝 [Online News].2024 年 05 月 17 日 .https://www.zaobao.com/realtime/world/story20240517-3681847 This news is reprinted from Lianhe Zaobao. The copyright belongs to the original author. If there is any infringement, please contact for deletion. The company reprints this news to provide more information for users and does not represent the company's views and positions.