Abstract
Ancient hair, which has proved to be an excellent source of well-preserved ancient DNA, is often preserved in paleofeces. Here, we separate and wash hair shafts preserved in a paleofecal specimen believed to be from a Darwin’s ground sloth, Mylodon darwinii. After extracting DNA from the recovered and cleaned hair using a protocol optimized for DNA extraction from keratinous substrates, we amplify 12S and 16S rDNA sequences from the DNA extract. As expected, the recovered sequences most closely match previously published sequences of M. darwinii. Our results demonstrate that hair preserved in paleofeces, even from temperate cave environments, is an effective source of ancient DNA.
*Note: For the case study presented in this chapter, we describe DNA extraction and amplification from ancient hairs preserved in paleofeces using a method similar to that presented in Chap. 6.
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Clack, A.A., MacPhee, R.D.E., Poinar, H.N. (2012). Case Study: Ancient Sloth DNA Recovered from Hairs Preserved in Paleofeces. In: Shapiro, B., Hofreiter, M. (eds) Ancient DNA. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 840. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-516-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-516-9_7
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