ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Evolutionary Models for the Diversification of Placental Mammals Across the KPg Boundary.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Pooled it
- Massive Genetic Diversity Loss Within Asian Elephant Subspecies: New Insights for Determining Conservation Priorities.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Ancient DNA from the Upper Paleolithic mammoth ivory of Hohle Fels, Germany.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The genomic impact of population connectivity and decline in Africa's elephants.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The reference genome of the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus): a foundation for conservation and genomic research.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Strengths and constraints in ivory provenance research: La Beleña (Córdoba, Spain) as a case study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Life histories of straight-tusked elephants from the Last Interglacial Neanderthal site of Neumark-Nord (~125 ka).Science advances · 2026Article
- Large-scale genomic phylogeography provides insights into evolutionary history and conservation priorities of the white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis).Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Landscape Features Shape Maternal Genetic Structure of Asian Elephants in Thailand: Insights from mtDNA.Biology · 2026Article
- The body mass-maximum speed relationship and the athletic capability of giant proboscideans and sauropods.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Ancient DNA fromiScience · 2025Article
- Repeated climate-driven dispersal and speciation in peripheral populations of Pleistocene mastodons.Science advances · 2025Article
- Genomic and morphological analysis reveals long-term mammoth hybridization in British Columbia, Canada.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Intron turnover of slc26a1 and slc26a2 and convergence of intron insertion sites.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genomics Reveals Distinct Evolutionary Lineages in Asian Elephants.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Transfer learning from inorganic materials to ivory detection.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Possible Involvement of Ghost Introgressions in the Striking Diversity of Vomeronasal Type 1 Receptor Genes in East African Cichlids.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Reconciling Species Concepts: An Ecological Perspective.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- Museomics and morphological analyses of historical and contemporary peninsular Italian wolf (Canis lupus italicus) samples.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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37 authors.
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Abstract
Elephantids are the world's most iconic megafaunal family, yet there is no comprehensive genomic assessment of their relationships. We report a total of 14 genomes, including 2 from the American mastodon, which is an extinct elephantid relative, and 12 spanning all three extant and three extinct elephantid species including an ∼120,000-y-old straight-tusked elephant, a Columbian mammoth, and woolly mammoths. Earlier genetic studies modeled elephantid evolution via simple bifurcating trees, but here we show that interspecies hybridization has been a recurrent feature of elephantid evolution. We found that the genetic makeup of the straight-tusked elephant, previously placed as a sister group to African forest elephants based on lower coverage data, in fact comprises three major components. Most of the straight-tusked elephant's ancestry derives from a lineage related to the ancestor of African elephants while its remaining ancestry consists of a large contribution from a lineage related to forest elephants and another related to mammoths. Columbian and woolly mammoths also showed evidence of interbreeding, likely following a latitudinal cline across North America. While hybridization events have shaped elephantid history in profound ways, isolation also appears to have played an important role. Our data reveal nearly complete isolation between the ancestors of the African forest and savanna elephants for ∼500,000 y, providing compelling justification for the conservation of forest and savanna elephants as separate species.
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