No abstract

The prey choice of extinct cave lions Panthera spelaea was determined using bone collagen isotopic signatures in the Belgian Ardennes and the Swabian Jura between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago as well as in the Late-glacial of the northwestern Alp foreland and of the Paris Basin. More than 370 specimens of large carnivorous and herbivorous mammals from 25 sites coeval with cave lion were analyzed. The isotopic results point to an individualistic prey choice for cave lions, with some individuals more oriented on reindeer and others on young cave bears. The isotopic signatures and therefore dietary choice of cave lions did not overlap with those of cave hyenas, indicating competitive exclusion between the large predators. The most recent western European cave lions seem to have been consuming mainly reindeer until the local extirpation of this prey species, which coincides chronologically with their own extinction. This restricted prey choice may be involved in the extinction of this large predator in Western Europe.

The genus Crocuta (African spotted and Eurasian cave hyenas) includes several closely related extinct and extant lineages. The relationships among these lineages, however, are contentious. Through the generation of population-level paleogenomes from late Pleistocene Eurasian cave hyena and genomes from modern African spotted hyena, we reveal the cross-continental evolutionary relationships between these enigmatic hyena lineages. We find a deep divergence (~2.5 Ma) between African and Eurasian Crocuta populations, suggesting that ancestral Crocuta left Africa around the same time as early Homo. Moreover, we find discordance between nuclear and mitochondrial phylogenies and evidence for bidirectional gene flow between African and Eurasian Crocuta after the lineages split, which may have complicated prior taxonomic classifications. Last, we find a number of introgressed loci that attained high frequencies within the recipient lineage, suggesting some level of adaptive advantage from admixture.

No abstract

No abstract