"How different are the extant types of elephants from the extinct types, such as mammoths and mastodons? With genomics, scientists can begin to answer the question. “A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants” with no less than 37 co-authors has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The findings show a surprising amount of gene flow (i.e., sex) has taken place between the different branches on the elephant tree.
Elephantids were once among the most widespread megafaunal families. However, only three
species of this family exist today. To reconstruct their evolutionary history, we generated 14 genomes from living and extinct elephantids and from the American mastodon. While previous studies examined only simple bifurcating relationships, we found that gene flow between elephantid species was common in the past. Straight-tusked elephants descend from a mixture of three ancestral populations related to the ancestor of African elephants, woolly mammoths, and present-day forest elephants. We detected interbreeding between North American woolly and Columbian mammoths but found no evidence of recent gene flow between forest and savanna elephants, demonstrating that both gene flow and isolation have been central in the evolution of elephantids.
Genesis 1:24
This is the first comprehensive genomic assessment of the relationships between elephants, the iconic symbol of megafauna (large animals). Evolutionists have assumed a Darwinian branching tree, with species diverging and going off on their own. What the genomes show, however, is that “interspecies hybridization has been a recurrent feature of elephantid evolution.” That’s not the kind of evolution Darwin promoted. Some cases were contrary to what evolutionists used to believe:
We found that the genetic makeup of the straight-tusked elephant, previously placed as a sister group to African forest elephants based on lower coverage data, in fact comprises three major components. Most of the straight-tusked elephant’s ancestry derives from a lineage related to the ancestor of African elephants while its remaining ancestry consists of a large contribution from a lineage related to forest elephants and another related to mammoths. Columbian and woolly mammoths also showed evidence of interbreeding, likely following a latitudinal cline across North America.
What they have found is more of a network of genetic relationships rather than a branching tree. Isolation, however, can lead to genetic distance, to the point where hybridization or infertility results." CMI
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, ...Genesis 1:24
