title: Ancient collagen reveals evolutionary history of the endemic South American 'ungulates'.
abstract: Since the late eighteenth century, fossils of bizarre extinct creatures have been described from the Americas, revealing a previously unimagined chapter in the history of mammals. The most bizarre of these are the 'native' South American ungulates thought to represent a group of mammals that evolved in relative isolation on South America, but with an uncertain affinity to any particular placental lineage. Many authors have considered them descended from Laurasian 'condylarths', which also includes the probable ancestors of perissodactyls and artiodactyls, whereas others have placed them either closer to the uniquely South American xenarthrans (anteaters, armadillos and sloths) or the basal afrotherians (e.g. elephants and hyraxes). These hypotheses have been debated owing to conflicting morphological characteristics and the hitherto inability to retrieve molecular information. Of the 'native' South American mammals, only the toxodonts and litopterns persisted until the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene. Owing to known difficulties in retrieving ancient DNA (aDNA) from specimens from warm climates, this research presents a molecular phylogeny for both Macrauchenia patachonica (Litopterna) and Toxodon platensis (Notoungulata) recovered using proteomics-based (liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry) sequencing analyses of bone collagen. The results place both taxa in a clade that is monophyletic with the perissodactyls, which today are represented by horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Life Sciences, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, UK m.buckley@manchester.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buckley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D003094:Collagen / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008322:Mammals / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010527:Perissodactyla / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D020543:Proteome; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D013020:South America; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry
chemical_list: D020543:Proteome; D003094:Collagen
keywords: Macrauchenia; South American ungulates; Toxodon; ancient collagen
references.citation: Bioinformatics. 2001 Aug;17(8):754-5
references.pmid: 11524383
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Feb 20;93(4):1705-9
references.pmid: 11607634
references.citation: Science. 2001 Dec 14;294(5550):2348-51
references.pmid: 11743200
references.citation: Syst Biol. 1999 Mar;48(1):119-37
references.pmid: 12078636
references.citation: Syst Biol. 2003 Oct;52(5):696-704
references.pmid: 14530136
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Oct 26;101(43):15386-91
references.pmid: 15494441
references.citation: Trends Genet. 2004 Dec;20(12):631-9
references.pmid: 15522459
references.citation: Nature. 2005 Mar 24;434(7032):497-501
references.pmid: 15791254
references.citation: Osteoporos Int. 2006;17(3):319-36
references.pmid: 16341622
references.citation: PLoS Biol. 2006 Apr;4(4):e91
references.pmid: 16515367
references.citation: Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Aug;19(8):430-8
references.pmid: 16701301
references.citation: Genome Res. 2007 Apr;17(4):413-21
references.pmid: 17322288
references.citation: Science. 2007 Apr 13;316(5822):280-5
references.pmid: 17431180
references.citation: PLoS One. 2007 Apr 18;2(4):e384
references.pmid: 17440620
references.citation: J Proteome Res. 2007 Jun;6(6):2287-94
references.pmid: 17488005
references.citation: Nature. 2007 Jun 21;447(7147):1003-6
references.pmid: 17581585
references.citation: Mol Biol Evol. 2007 Sep;24(9):2059-68
references.pmid: 17630282
references.citation: Syst Biol. 2007 Aug;56(4):673-84
references.pmid: 17661234
references.citation: Science. 2008 Jan 4;319(5859):33; author reply 33
references.pmid: 18174420
references.citation: PLoS One. 2008 Jul 30;3(7):e2808
references.pmid: 18665236
references.citation: Bioessays. 2009 Aug;31(8):853-64
references.pmid: 19582725
references.citation: Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2009 Dec;23(23):3843-54
references.pmid: 19899187
references.citation: J Anat. 2010 May;216(5):600-10
references.pmid: 20525088
references.citation: Trends Ecol Evol. 1988 Nov;3(11):291-7
references.pmid: 21227261
references.citation: Naturwissenschaften. 2011 Jun;98(6):509-17
references.pmid: 21494870
references.citation: Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Sep 12;366(1577):2478-502
references.pmid: 21807730
references.citation: Science. 2011 Oct 28;334(6055):521-4
references.pmid: 21940861
references.citation: Biochem Int. 1990;21(3):491-6
references.pmid: 2222494
references.citation: Mol Biol Evol. 2012 Jun;29(6):1695-701
references.pmid: 22319168
references.citation: Proc Biol Sci. 2012 Sep 7;279(1742):3491-500
references.pmid: 22628470
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Sep 11;109(37):14942-7
references.pmid: 22930817
references.citation: Science. 2013 Feb 8;339(6120):662-7
references.pmid: 23393258
references.citation: Nat Commun. 2013;4:1550
references.pmid: 23462993
references.citation: PLoS One. 2013;8(3):e59614
references.pmid: 23555726
references.citation: Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2014 Mar 30;28(6):605-15
references.pmid: 24519823
references.citation: Proc Biol Sci. 2014 Oct 22;281(1793):null
references.pmid: 25165770
references.citation: Evolution. 1966 Sep;20(3):408-417
references.pmid: 28562971
references.citation: Evolution. 1971 Sep;25(3):523-529
references.pmid: 28565033
references.citation: FEBS Lett. 1986 Oct 6;206(2):262-6
references.pmid: 3019771
references.citation: Experientia. 1985 Sep 15;41(9):1192-3
references.pmid: 4043335
references.citation: Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1981 May 8;292(1057):143-9
references.pmid: 6167997
references.citation: Naturwissenschaften. 1984 Nov;71(11):586-8
references.pmid: 6521758
references.citation: Nature. 1981 Aug 6;292(5823):538-40
references.pmid: 7254349
references.citation: Eur J Biochem. 1994 Sep 15;224(3):943-50
references.pmid: 7925418
references.citation: Bone. 1998 Mar;22(3):181-7
references.pmid: 9514209