Palaeogenomes of a lost world: Ancient bovids of the submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain of southern Africa

The recent, detailed palaeoecological characterisation of a drowned ecosystem off the southern coast of Africa, known as the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), has placed subfossil collections of African bovids from archaeological sites along this coast into meaningful environmental and temporal context.

For the excellent work done to describe this palaeoecosystem, genetic characterisation of the mammals that roamed its plains is lacking, despite an abundance of subfossils available.

In this Action, I will use palaeogenomics techniques to generate ancient mitochondrial genomic data of six African bovid species spanning five time periods over the past ~100,000-years, including the present.

The target species represent three broad feeding guilds: grazers- Cape buffalo, long-horned buffalo (extinct) and southern reedbuck, a mixed feeder- common eland, and browsers- grey rhebok and Cape grysbok.

These data will be used to investigate drivers of temporal changes in genetic diversity, such as climate change, range-size change due to the emergence and submergence of the PAP with changing sea levels, the emergence of pastoralism in human societies, over-hunting by colonial settlers, and recent population fragmentation, and whether different feeding guilds were affected discordantly.

The project will be hosted by Assoc. Prof.

Eline Lorenzen, a respected expert in the field of African bovid phylogeography and ancient DNA, at the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen, which houses a world-leading ancient DNA facility.

This Action will improve my current scientific and transferable skills and will provide the opportunity for me to learn valuable new skills that will considerably enhance my future career prospects.

In this Action, I will generate the first population-level palaeogenomic data of wildlife from southern Africa and contribute novel and valuable insights into the population dynamics of African bovids in relation to climate, humans, disease and extinction.