The Evolutionary History of the Extinct Baltic Sea Harp Seal Population.

ABSTRACT: The now-extinct harp seal population that inhabited the Baltic Sea from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age is an enigma. It occurred outside the species' contemporary Arctic range, likely deviated from typical harp seal migratory behaviour, and experienced body size reductions and dramatic population fluctuations leading up to its extinction. Here we use ancient DNA analyses to shed more light on the evolutionary history of the Baltic Sea harp seal population, including its origin, timing of colonisation, diversity and factors contributing to its demise. We generated 49 ancient Baltic and eight ancient Arctic harp seal mitogenomes, which we analysed together with 53 contemporary Arctic harp seal mitogenomes. We detected limited phylogeographic resolution among ancient and contemporary populati

SUBMITTER: Bro-Jorgensen MH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12061552 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature