title: Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China.
abstract: The domestication of cattle is generally accepted to have taken place in two independent centres: around 10,500 years ago in the Near East, giving rise to modern taurine cattle, and two millennia later in southern Asia, giving rise to zebu cattle. Here we provide firmly dated morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene management of taurine cattle in northeastern China. We describe conjoining mandibles from this region that show evidence of oral stereotypy, dated to the early Holocene by two independent ¹⁴C dates. Using Illumina high-throughput sequencing coupled with DNA hybridization capture, we characterize 15,406 bp of the mitogenome with on average 16.7-fold coverage. Phylogenetic analyses reveal a hitherto unknown mitochondrial haplogroup that falls outside the known taurine diversity. Our data suggest that the first attempts to manage cattle in northern China predate the introduction of domestic cattle that gave rise to the current stock by several thousand years.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Plateau Lake Ecology and Global Change, College of Tourism and Geography, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Chenggong 650500, China.
authors.forename: Hucai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Johanna L A
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Paijmans
authors.forename: Fengqin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Xiaohong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Guangjie
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Chuzhao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lei
authors.forename: Xiujuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Zhenyi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Daniel G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Bradley
authors.forename: Ludovic
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Orlando
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: O'Connor
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hofreiter
mesh_terms: D000822:Animal Husbandry / Q000266:history*; D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000235:genetics*; D002681:China; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008334:Mandible / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D010802:Phylogeny
chemical_list: D004247:DNA