In the Southern Hemisphere, there are two exceptionally large noncontinental landmasses with very long histories of geographical isolation—New Zealand and Madagascar. Both landmasses have unique and distinctive fauna and flora that nonetheless present a number of intriguing parallels, including the long-term preservation of distant sister lineages to otherwise globally widespread groups of animals. Further, both landmasses were also home to >100-kg megafauna that became extinct only in the last thousand years—for example, moa in New Zealand, and elephant birds and giant lemurs in Madagascar—leaving many unanswered questions about the evolution, ecology, and biology of these vanished giants. The generally temperate climate of New Zealand, which is conducive to DNA preservation, has allowed nuclear genome sequencing from extinct species—“paleogenomics”—to be brought to bear in answering these questions (1); however, due to the comparatively warmer and more humid climate of Madagascar—poorer for DNA preservation (2)—it has remained uncertain whether similarly powerful paleogenomic datasets might be obtained for extinct species from Madagascar. Marciniak et al.’s (3) analysis of genomic data from a 1.5-thousand-year-old bone belonging to the giant extinct “koala lemur” (Megaladapis edwardsi) now puts Madagascar firmly on the paleogenomic map (4).

中文翻译：

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考拉狐猴的古代 DNA 将马达加斯加置于古基因组图谱上 [人类学]

在南半球，有两个非常大的非大陆大陆，有着很长的地理隔离历史——新西兰和马达加斯加。这两个大陆都有独特而独特的动植物群，尽管如此，它们仍呈现出许多有趣的相似之处，包括长期保存远距离的姐妹谱系与原本在全球范围内广泛分布的动物群体。此外，这两个大陆上还栖息着体重超过 100 公斤的巨型动物，这些动物仅在最近一千年才灭绝——例如新西兰的恐鸟，马达加斯加的象鸟和巨型狐猴——留下了许多关于进化、生态、和这些消失的巨人的生物学。新西兰气候普遍温和，有利于DNA保存，1 ); 然而，由于马达加斯加相对温暖和潮湿的气候——DNA 保存较差（2）——仍然不确定是否可以为马达加斯加的灭绝物种获得同样强大的古基因组数据集。Marciniak 等人 ( 3 ) 对属于已灭绝的巨型“考拉狐猴” ( Megaladapis edwardsi )的 1.5 万年前骨头的基因组数据进行的分析，现在将马达加斯加牢牢地放在了古基因组地图上 ( 4 )。