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Why European colonization drove the blue antelope to extinction - EurekAlert
An international team of researchers led by the University of Potsdam has generated and analyzed the first high-coverage nuclear genome of the extinct blue antelope in cooperation with Colossal Biosciences and the Museum of Natural History Berlin. The genomic data shed light on the evolutionary history and extinction of the species. The blue antelope is the only large African mammal species to have become extinct in recent times. The results of the study, which have now been published in "Current Biology", show that the species was probably adapted to a small population size and survived like this for thousands of years. However, this also made them susceptible to sudden impacts like hunting, which increased after European colonization of southern Africa.An international team of researchers led by the University of Potsdam has generated and analyzed the first high-coverage nuclear genome of the extinct blue antelope in cooperation with Colossal Biosciences and the Museum of Natural History Berlin. The genomic data shed light on the evolutionary history and extinction of the species. The blue antelope is the only large African mammal species to have become extinct in recent times. The results of the study, which have now been published in "Current Biology", show that the species was probably adapted to a small population size and survived like this for thousands of years. However, this also made them susceptible to sudden impacts like hunting, which increased after European colonization of southern Africa.
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