ArticlePeerJ2014
Extraordinary incidence of cervical ribs indicates vulnerable condition in Late Pleistocene mammoths.
Article in PeerJ, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Foraminal widening indicating a spinal nerve tumor in the saber-tooth catFrontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Does fast running limit numerical variability of the vertebral column in rabbits and hares (Leporidae: Lagomorpha)?Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Increased incidences of cervical ribs in deer indicate extinction risk.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Morphology of the Ventral Process of the Sixth Cervical Vertebra in Extinct and ExtantAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Breaking the constraint on the number of cervical vertebrae in mammals: On homeotic transformations in lorises and pottos.Evolution & development · 2022Article
- Vertebral Formulae and Congenital Vertebral Anomalies in Guinea Pigs: A Retrospective Radiographic Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- Skeletal Anomalies in The Neandertal Family of El Sidrón (Spain) Support A Role of Inbreeding in Neandertal Extinction.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- C7 vertebra homeotic transformation in domestic dogs - are Pug dogs breaking mammalian evolutionary constraints?Journal of anatomy · 2018Article
- Evolutionary adaptation revealed by comparative genome analysis of woolly mammoths and elephants.DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes · 2017Article
- High incidence of cervical ribs indicates vulnerable condition in Late Pleistocene woolly rhinoceroses.PeerJ · 2017Article
- No relationship between vertebral column shifts and limb fluctuating asymmetry in human foetuses.PeerJ · 2017Article
- Possible Further Evidence of Low Genetic Diversity in the El Sidrón (Asturias, Spain) Neandertal Group: Congenital Clefts of the Atlas.PloS one · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The number of cervical vertebrae in mammals is highly conserved at seven. We have shown that changes of this number are selected against due to a coupling with major congenital abnormalities (pleiotropic effects). Here we show that the incidence of abnormal cervical vertebral numbers in Late Pleistocene mammoths from the North Sea is high (33.3%) and approximately 10 times higher than that of extant elephants (3.6%). Abnormal numbers were due to the presence of large cervical ribs on the seventh vertebra, which we deduced from the presence of rib articulation facets on sixth (posterior side) and seventh (anterior side) cervical vertebrae. The incidence of abnormal cervical vertebral numbers in mammoths appears to be much higher than in other mammalian species, apart from exceptional sloths, manatees and dugongs and indicates a vulnerable condition. We argue that the increased incidence of cervical ribs in mammoths is probably caused by inbreeding and adverse conditions that impact early pregnancies in declining populations close to extinction in the Late Pleistocene.
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