Make some more room on the elephant family tree: genetic analysis has shown that what we know as African elephants actually represent two species rather than one, joining the Asian elephant to make three modern species roaming the world today.
In the most comprehensive elephant genome study carried out to date, scientists found a complex history of interbreeding and evolutionary history between these three living species and their related ancestors, including mammoths and mastodons.
Apart from clearly defining the elephant species we have today, the approach in this study could also help us map the evolutionary family trees of other animals in the future, according to the international team of researchers behind it.
"The most surprising result was the degree of interbreeding between species," says one of the team, David Adelson from the University of Adelaide in Australia.
"We didn't really expect there would be gene flow between the mammoths and =READ MORE
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