UPDATE: Whale killing: DNA shows Iceland whale was rare hybrid

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent

20 July 2018

Genetic material from a large whale killed off the coast of Iceland has confirmed the creature was a rare hybrid.

Campaigners had been concerned that the slaughtered animal was a protected blue whale, the largest species on the planet.

Now DNA has shown it to be the offspring of a blue and a fin whale, as the whaling company had claimed.

Researchers say these hybrids are rare and trading their meat is illegal.

Photographic evidence from anti-whaling groups had shown a large animal being butchered in Iceland early in July - based on these images, some experts concluded that it was a juvenile male blue, a species that hasn't been deliberately killed since 1978.

Now tests carried out at Iceland's Marine Research Institute have confirmed that it was the offspring of a female blue whale and a male fin whale.

Why does the species matter?

The key reason for interest in the species was to determine whether this killing was legal or not under Icelandic law.

Weighing as much as 200 tonnes and stretching up to 30 metres, blue whales were hunted to the brink by commercial whalers from many countries including the UK from the 1940s to the 1960s when they became a protected stock under the International Whaling Commission.

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Mystery beast in ice age cave art revealed as cow-bison hybrid

18 October 2016

By Alice Klein

Cow, bison or both? DNA fingerprinting has revealed that a strange bovine creature painted by European cave artists during the ice age was a cross between a cow ancestor and bison.

Ancient European paintings depict two types of bison: one with long horns, a large hump and robust forequarters, and the other with short horns and a small hump. The former is more common in cave art painted more than 22,000 years ago, while the latter emerges about 17,000 years ago.

But DNA sequencing of bones and teeth from 64 ancient bison has revealed that there was another species in the mix. Over 120,000 years ago, interbreeding between steppe bison and aurochs – the now-extinct ancestors of modern cattle – created a hybrid animal.

The finding explains why the two bison forms appear in ancient paintings, and why bison bones uncovered from the ice age are not uniform in size and morphology.

It also helps to solve the long-running mystery of where modern European bison – or wisent – come from. These animals are genetically distinct from American bison, which are descended from steppe bison.

Julien Soubrier at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and his colleagues analysed ancient bison DNA to show that European bison are descended from the hybrid bison. Analysing the DNA of modern animals was not sufficient to understand this process because they went through a genetic bottleneck of only 12 individuals in the 1920s, due to decline in habitat and hunting.

Cave art and fossil dating suggest that the short-horned hybrid bison and long-horned steppe bison swapped dominance multiple times from at least 55,000 years ago.

This was most likely a response to major environmental shifts, says Soubrier. “We know there were dramatic changes in temperature occurring every few thousand years in the late Pleistocene,” he says. “It’s possible that when it became colder, the steppe bison migrated elsewhere, while the hybrid found a niche and stayed.”

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Humans sped up evolution in a Canadian lake. How did this happen?

FEBRUARY 24, 2016

by Susanna Pilny

The accidental introduction of crayfish into a lake in British Columbia, Canada, by humans has caused the extinction of two species of fish that had lived there for some 15,000 years—well, sort of.

Life, ah…finds a way, and what has replaced these two fish could have dire consequences for the local environment.

The two fish were similar species of endangered threespine stickleback fish, both of which coexisted peacefully in Enos Lake in BC—until they didn’t.

"When two similar species are in one environment, they often perform different ecological roles," said co-author Seth Rudman, a PhD student in zoology at UBC, in a statement. "When they go extinct, it has strong consequences for the ecosystem."

In the case of Enos Lake, one species tended to live in the middle of the lake, where it preyed on zooplankton, while the other lived nearer to the shore and ate mostly waterborne insect larvae. They more or less left each other alone, breeding only with their own species, for thousands of years.

But then, in the early 1990s, American signal crayfish were accidentally introduced to the lake, likely through fishermen who were using them as bait on Vancouver Island.

From then on, the crayfish began to clear-cut the vegetation on the bottom of the lake—forcing the middle-of-the-lake sticklebacks to search for food and mates in the open water above, where the shore-preferring species lived.

Forced together, these two species of fish began to interbreed between 1994 and 1997—and then totally disappeared, leaving behind only a hybrid species of stickleback.

Read more at 

Complete camel skeleton unearthed in Austria

Date:

April 1, 2015

Source:

Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien

Summary:

Archaeologists working on a rescue excavation uncovered a complete camel skeleton in Tulln, Lower Austria. The camel, which was dated to the time of the Second Ottoman War in the 17th century, most likely died in the city of Tulln. Genetic analyses showed that the animal was a male hybrid of a dromedary in the maternal line and a Bactrian camel in the paternal line. The find is unique for Central Europe.

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How do you solve a problem like the 'Beefalo'?

2 March 2015 Last updated at 00:26

By Anne-Marie BullockProducer, Costing The Earth

When American Buffalo were cross-bred with domestic cattle, a hybrid dubbed the "Beefalo" was spawned. But the creatures escaped and are now causing environmental havoc in The Grand Canyon. Some want a cull, but is this the best way to deal with the animals?

There is a strange hybrid creature - an alien, the result of a failed breeding programme - causing havoc in the Grand Canyon.

Its destructive ways are alarming both environmentalists and Native American groups who want it removed, yet tourists find it so intriguing they're putting their lives at risk to catch a glimpse.

So just how do you solve a problem like the "Beefalo"?

Out on the canyon's North Rim it's estimated that at least 600 beefalo - a crossbreed of bison and domestic cattle - are roaming.

This thirsty beast can consume 10 gallons each per trip to a watering hole, which means they can drink a source dry in no time.

But the animals' environmental impact doesn't stop there. They also defecate at the watering holes and their hefty weight compacts the soil.

Their leisurely dust baths and healthy appetites leave the ground bare.

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Is Bigfoot part human?

HOUSTON -

A researcher claims that a hybrid species commonly called "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch" should be recognized as indigenous people and must be protected.

A team of scientists, led by Dr. Melba S. Ketchum, of Nacogdoches, Texas, has sequenced three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and determined that the species is a human hybrid.

"The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species. Our data indicate that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens," Ketchum said.

Ketchum said the Sasquatch is a result of a woman mating with an unknown animal.

"Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence," Ketchum said.

Ketchum said public officials and law enforcement need to recognize Sasquatch as people.

"Genetically, the Sasquatch are a human hybrid with unambiguously modern human maternal ancestry. Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a 'license' to hunt, trap, or kill them," Ketchum said.

Watch video and read on:  http://www.click2houston.com/news/Is-Bigfoot-part-human/-/1735978/17565382/-/fs2urd/-/index.html

Rare Glimpse Into the Origin of Species

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2012) — A new species of monkey flower, created by the union of two foreign plant species, has been discovered on the bank of a stream in Scotland. Genetic changes in this attractive yellow-flowered hybrid have allowed it to overcome infertility and made it a rare example of a brand new species that has originated in the wild in the last 150 years. Thousands of wild species and some crops are thought to have originated in this way, yet only a handful of examples exist where this type of species formation has occurred in recent history.

The ancestors of the new plant were brought from the Americas as botanical curiosities in the 1800s and were quickly adopted by Victorian gardeners. Soon after their arrival, they escaped the confines of British gardens and can now be found growing in the wild, along the banks of rivers and streams. Reproduction between these species produces hybrids that are now widespread in Britain. Yet, genetic differences between the two parents mean that the hybrids are infertile and cannot go beyond the first generation.

Dr Mario Vallejo-Marin, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Stirling, has documented the first examples of hybrid monkey flowers that have overcome these genetic barriers and show fully restored fertility. This fertile hybrid derived from 'immigrant' parents represents a new species, native to Scotland. Dr Vallejo-Marin has chosen to name this species Mimulus peregrinus, which translates as 'the wanderer'. The species is described in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120710120231.htm