Biologists studied using complete and isotopic genomic correlation analysis, and determined the genetic and environmental origin of elephants and their history, with the help of tusks found in a ship that sank in the 16th century.
Current Biology reports that in 1533 the Portuguese ship Bom Jesus was carrying a 40-ton cargo: gold, silver, copper and over 100 elephant tusks, but it sank on its way to India off the coast of Africa near present-day Namibia.
Scientists from Namibia, South Africa, Britain and the United States have studied the tusks of elephants found on this ship, which was discovered in 2008.
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“When the ship sank, the tusks became under the metal alloy layer on the sea floor, preventing it from being eroded by sea currents, which could lead to the destruction and dispersal of the shipwreck and its cargo,” says Alida de Flaming, a researcher from the University of Illinois in Urban Champaign. In this region there are cool sea currents that seem to have preserved the DNA in the fangs. “
The researchers were able to extract DNA from 44 tusks and conducted a genetic analysis, which allowed them to determine the types of elephants, their geographical habitat and the terrain in which they lived. And it turned out that all the tusks belonged to elephants that lived in the forests of West Africa. According to De Flamingen, these results are consistent with the establishment of Portuguese marketing centers along the coasts of West Africa during that period.
Subsequent studies of DNA mitochondria, which travel through the maternal line, revealed high-precision geographic location, and all were found to be from the same region.
The researchers were able to identify 17 family lineages to which these elephants belong, only four of which still live in Africa.
“The other subspecies disappeared, because West Africa lost 95 percent of elephants in the following centuries, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction,” says Professor Alfred Rocca of the University of Illinois at Urban Champaign.
The results of other analyzes showed that these elephants lived in a transition area between forests and savannahs, and migrated from one region to another throughout the year / apparently in search of water.
And the professor notes, it was believed that elephants moved to the forests of West Africa in the twentieth century, after ivory traders wiped out the savannah elephants completely. But the results of our study confirm that elephants lived in that region in the sixteenth century.
According to the researchers, these results are important for understanding the evolution of the habitat of African elephants and the history of the region because ivory was the main driver of trade between Europe, Africa and Asia.
Source: Novosti
