The descent of bison

Abstract

Two bison species roamed the Eurasian continent during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, the steppe bison, Bison priscus, and the woodland bison, Bison schoetensacki. Despite the wealth of fossil remains for these species, especially for the steppe bison, their genomic characterization started only a few years ago. Even now, when complete mitochondrial genomes are available for several specimens, information about nuclear genomes is still very fragmentary, limited to a few thousands positions at best. We present here our contribution to the characterization of these ancient bison genomes and to the clarification of their phylogeny.