Record 24-Million-Year-Old Proteins Recovered From Fossil Tooth Enamel
SOUTH AFRICA, JUL 9 – Researchers sequenced proteins from 2-million-year-old Paranthropus robustus teeth, revealing biological sex and genetic diversity in early human relatives, advancing paleoproteomics in Africa.
- Researchers recovered protein fragments from fossilized teeth dating up to 24 million years old in Kenya's Rift Valley and Canada's Haughton Crater.
- The fossils endured preservation through volcanic ash in Kenya's hot Rift Valley and cold, dry conditions in Canada's Arctic, enabling protein survival beyond previous limits.
- The new extraction technique allowed analysis of enamel proteins, which are more resilient than DNA and can reveal biological sex, evolutionary relationships, and species diversity.
- Daniel Green stated that these fragments are "five times older than any retrieved before," and Emmanuel K. Ndiema said the research "provides direct evidence of evolutionary relationships."
- This breakthrough extends paleoproteomics into the early Miocene, opening new avenues to study molecular evolution of extinct large mammals and hominin ancestors.
22 Articles
22 Articles
Africa: New Clues From 2 Million-Year-Old Tooth Enamel Tell Us More About an Ancient Relative of Humans
Analysis - For nearly a century, scientists have been puzzling over fossils from a strange and robust-looking distant relative of early humans: Paranthropus robustus. It walked upright, and was built for heavy chewing with relatively massive jaws, and huge teeth with thick dental enamel. It's thought to have lived between 2.25 million and 1.7 million years ago.
Eighteen million years of diverse enamel proteomes from the East African Rift
Research into the palaeobiology of extinct taxa through ancient DNA and proteomics has been mostly limited to Plio-Pleistocene fossils1–9, due to molecular breakdown over time, which is exacerbated in tropical settings1–3. Here we sample small proteomes from the interior enamel of fossils at palaeontological sites from the Pleistocene to the Oligocene in the Turkana Basin, Kenya, which has produced a rich record of Cenozoic mammalian evolution10…
In a first, enamel proteins 18-20 million years old from tropical, High Arctic sites unravel palaeobiology of extinct taxa
One study is of enamel proteins from extinct mammal fossils from the Turkana Basin in Kenya, and the other study is of enamel proteins from extinct mammals in the Haughton impact crater site located on Devon Island, Nunavut in far Northern Canada.
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