Far away from home? Ancient DNA shows the presence of bicolored shrew (Crocidura leucodon) in Bronze Age Denmark.

ABSTRACT: An excavation of an Early Iron Age village near Aalborg in Denmark uncovered the jaws and skull fragments from a small mammal that were morphologically identified to the genus Crocidura (white-toothed shrews). Three Crocidura species are known from prehistoric continental Europe but none of them are distributed in Scandinavia, which is why this surprising finding warranted further analyses. The bone was radiocarbon-dated to 2840-2750 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), corresponding to the Late Bronze Age and hence earlier than the Iron Age archeological context in which it was found. Using highly optimized ancient DNA protocols, we extracted DNA from one tooth and shotgun-sequenced the sample to reconstruct a near-complete mitochondrial reference genome (17,317 bp, 32

SUBMITTER: Mousavi-Derazmahalleh M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11219242 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature