Ancient DNA Analysis of Archaeological Aurochs Remains from China

As the wild progenitor of modern domestic cattle, aurochs became extinct in the 17th century in Europe. Their extinction in China was once thought to start at the beginning of the Neolithic due to some climatic changes. However, our recent ancient DNA analysis (Cai et al., 2018) has confirmed the aurochs had in fact survived to the end of the Late Neolithic and many of them were mistakenly identified as another species in the past.This research will apply the next-generation-sequencing analysis to obtain more informative DNA data to examine the population changes of aurochs in ancient China,in terms of the adaption to climatic changes and the impacts by human hunting and over hunting. The new research will involve in detailed genomic analysis and also multi-disciplinary integration with archaeology, SFU is one of the few places with the dedicated ancient DNA lab and the required multi-disciplinary expertise.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dongya Yang

Student:

Partner:

Jilin University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: