Fig 1.
Overview of the cave site and bone samples.
(A) Geographic localization of the Trois-Frères cave. (B) Topography of the cave showing the site (white ellipse) where the samples were collected in the Salle du Grand Éboulis. (C-E) The samples considered for DNA extraction in the present study. SGE1: ulna distal fragment; SGE2: rib; SGE3: humerus fragment; SGE5, vertebra.
Fig 2.
PCR analysis of the samples for Bovinae sequences.
DNA extracts were analyzed for a fragment of the mitochondrial cytB gene using primers encompassing a 63-bp sequence where Bos (Bos taurus, Bos primigenius) and Bison (Bison bison, Bison bonasus) reference genomes display 5 differences. The cloned PCR products were sequenced and identified as Bos or Bison according to the number of differences with the reference genomes (see text for details).
Fig 3.
Radiocarbon and stable isotopes data for the SGE2 bison sample.
(A) Uncalibrated (B.P.) and calibrated (calBP) age of the bone sample. The calBP data correspond to 95.4% (2 σ) confidence interval of the sample age using IntCal13 calibration curve. (B) Characterization of the dated material.
Fig 4.
Characteristics of the sequences used to assemble the Bison priscus mitochondrial genome.
(A) Size distribution of the 3,851 unique Illumina reads. (B) Coverage for each position of the SGE2seq sequence obtained by merging the sequences of Illumina reads and PCR fragments.
Fig 5.
Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic tree of complete mitochondrial genomes of Bison and Bos species.
The numbers indicated in parentheses after the species name refer to the number of genomes examined for that species (which is equal to 1 by default). The tree with the highest log-likelihood is shown drawn to scale, with branch lengths established from the number of substitutions per site. The same topology was obtained with the Minimum Evolution (ME) and Neighbor-Joining (NJ) methods. The percentages of trees in which the associated taxa clustered together with the ML method are displayed next to the branches (these bootstrap values were determined with 1000 replicates). These percentages were also equal to 100 with the ME and the NJ methods. Photography of painted and engraved bison by Robert Bégouën.