Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia

Tracking Cats: Problems with Placing Feline Carnivores on δ18O, δD Isoscapes

Several felids are endangered and threatened by the illegal wildlife trade. Establishing geographic origin of tissues of endangered species is thus crucial for wildlife crime investigations and effective conservation strategies. As shown in other species, stable isotope analysis of hydrogen and oxygen in hair (δD(h), δ(18)O(h)) can be used as a tool for provenance determination. However, reliably predicting the spatial distribution of δD(h) and δ(18)O(h) requires confirmation from animal tissues of known origin and a detailed understanding of the isotopic routing of dietary nutrients into felid hair.We used coupled δD(h) and δ(18)O(h) measurements from the North American bobcat (Lynx rufus) and puma (Puma concolor) with precipitation-based assignment isoscapes to test the feasibility of isotopic geo-location of felidae. Hairs of felid and rabbit museum specimens from 75 sites across the United States and Canada were analyzed. Bobcat and puma lacked a significant correlation between H/O isotopes in hair and local waters, and also exhibited an isotopic decoupling of δ(18)O(h) and δD(h). Conversely, strong δD and δ(18)O coupling was found for key prey, eastern cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus; hair) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; collagen, bone phosphate).Puma and bobcat hairs do not adhere to expected pattern of H and O isotopic variation predicted by precipitation isoscapes for North America. Thus, using bulk hair, felids cannot be placed on δ(18)O and δD isoscapes for use in forensic investigations. The effective application of isotopes to trace the provenance of feline carnivores is likely compromised by major controls of their diet, physiology and metabolism on hair δ(18)O and δD related to body water budgets. Controlled feeding experiments, combined with single amino acid isotope analysis of diets and hair, are needed to reveal mechanisms and physiological traits explaining why felid hair does not follow isotopic patterns demonstrated in many other taxa

Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans

©2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.We sequenced the genomes of a ∼7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight ∼8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes1-4 wit

Search for anomalies in the \u3bd e appearance from a \u3bd \u3bc beam

We report an updated result from the ICARUS experiment on the search for \u3bd\u3bc \u2192 \u3bde anomalies with the CNGS beam, produced at CERN with an average energy of 20 GeV and traveling 730 km to the Gran Sasso Labora- tory. The present analysis is based on a total sample of 1995 events of CNGS neutrino interactions, which corresponds to an almost doubled sample with respect to the previously published result. Four clear \u3bde events have been visually identified over the full sample, compared with an expecta- tion of 6.4 \ub1 0.9 events from conventional sources. The re- sult is compatible with the absence of additional anomalous contributions. At 90 % and 99 % confidence levels, the lim- its to possible oscillated events are 3.7 and 8.3 respectively. The corresponding limit to oscillation probability becomes consequently 3.4 7 10 123 and 7.6 7 10 123 , respectively. The present result confirms, with an improved sensitivity, the early result already published by the ICARUS Collabora- tion