Thomas Jessica E, Carvalho Gary R, Haile James, Martin Michael D, Castruita Jose A Samaniego, Niemann Jonas, Sinding Mikkel-Holger S, Sandoval-Velasco Marcela, Rawlence Nicolas J, Fuller Errol, Fjeldså Jon, Hofreiter Michael, Stewart John R, Gilbert M Thomas P, Knapp Michael
Molecular Ecology and Fisheries Genetics Laboratory, School of Biological Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2UW, UK.
Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5-7, 1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Genes (Basel). 2017 Jun 15;8(6):164. doi: 10.3390/genes8060164.
One hundred and seventy-three years ago, the last two Great Auks, , ever reliably seen were killed. Their internal organs can be found in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, but the location of their skins has remained a mystery. In 1999, Great Auk expert Errol Fuller proposed a list of five potential candidate skins in museums around the world. Here we take a palaeogenomic approach to test which-if any-of Fuller's candidate skins likely belong to either of the two birds. Using mitochondrial genomes from the five candidate birds (housed in museums in Bremen, Brussels, Kiel, Los Angeles, and Oldenburg) and the organs of the last two known individuals, we partially solve the mystery that has been on Great Auk scholars' minds for generations and make new suggestions as to the whereabouts of the still-missing skin from these two birds.
一百七十三年前，人们最后一次确切看到的两只大海雀被猎杀。它们的内脏保存在丹麦自然历史博物馆的藏品中，但它们的皮毛去向仍是个谜。1999年，大海雀专家埃罗尔·富勒列出了世界各地博物馆中五张可能的候选皮毛清单。在这里，我们采用古基因组学方法来测试富勒列出的候选皮毛中是否有属于这两只大海雀的。我们利用五只候选鸟（分别保存在不来梅、布鲁塞尔、基尔、洛杉矶和奥尔登堡的博物馆中）的线粒体基因组以及最后两只已知大海雀的器官，部分解开了困扰大海雀学者几代人的谜团，并就这两只大海雀仍下落不明的皮毛去向提出了新的推测。
