Abstract
Starting four decades ago, studies have examined the ecology and evolutionary dynamics of populations and species using short mitochondrial DNA fragments and stable isotopes. Through technological and analytical advances, the methods and biomolecules at our disposal have increased significantly to now include lipids, whole genomes, proteomes, and even epigenomes. At an unprecedented resolution, the study of ancient biomolecules has made it possible for us to disentangle the complex processes that shaped the ancient faunal diversity across millennia, with the potential to aid in implicating probable causes of species extinction and how humans impacted the genetics and ecology of wild and domestic species. However, even now, few studies explore interdisciplinary biomolecular approaches to reveal ancient faunal diversity dynamics in relation to environmental and anthropogenic impact. This review will approach how biomolecules have been implemented in a broad variety of topics and species, from the extinct Pleistocene megafauna to ancient wild and domestic stocks, as well as how their future use has the potential to offer an enhanced understanding of drivers of past faunal diversity on Earth.
Highlights
Animals have always been a part of and shaped human history
It is increasingly important for us to gain an understanding of the diversity and dynamics of the palaeofauna, some of which we only know from fossils and the artistic representations made by prehistoric humans millennia ago [1]
Still methodologically challenging owing to the noise introduced by postmortem damage of the molecules, continuous advances in palaeomics and palaeoecology are making it possible for us to investigate increasingly more ancient faunal diversity
Summary
Animals have always been a part of and shaped human history. people have played a crucial role in shaping the diversity and dynamics of animal populations, not least in modern times. Studies have begun to focus on palaeovirology as a means to elucidate the role of ancient viruses in ancient faunal evolutionary history (e.g., extinctions, island isolations, migrations), in addition to modern consequences on extant species [20,21] These breakthroughs in ancient biomolecular research over the last decades are instrumental in opening up new perspectives on extinct and extant diversity and their deep-time population histories, ecology, and evolutionary patterns [22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29] not accessible through the analysis of modern molecules alone [30]. We will discuss the ways in which multiproxy biomolecular approaches may further our understanding of the evolution and extinction of some emblematic Pleistocene species on the one hand, and of the faunal transformations starting around the Pleistocene/Holocene transition on the other (the most profound being the domestication of a number of species)
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