RETRACTED: The revised stratigraphy of the hominin-bearing site of Kromdraai (Gauteng, South Africa) and associated perspectives.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy). This article has been retracted at the request of the co-Editors-in-Chief and the authors. The Results and Discussion of this article duplicate significant parts of book chapter "A revised stratigraphy of Kromdraai", published by L.B., R.M., R.C., F.T. and J.B. in Braga, J. and Thackeray, J.F. (Eds.), "Kromdraai. A Birthplace of Paranthropus in the Cradle of Humankind" (2016, SUN MeDIA MeTRO, pp. 31-47), https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928355076. One of the conditions of submission of a paper to Journal of Human Evolution is that authors declare explicitly that that their work is original and has not been published previously. Reuse of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

Assessment of alternatives to environmental toxic formalin for DNA conservation in biological specimens.

One essential step of museum and clinical specimen preservation is immersion in a fixative fluid to prevent degradation. Formalin is the most largely used fixative, but its benefit is balanced with its toxic and carcinogenic status. Moreover, because formalin-fixation impairs nucleic acids recovery and quality, current museum wet collections and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded clinical samples do not represent optimal tanks of molecular information. Our study has been developed to compare formalin to two alternative fixatives (RCL2® and ethanol) in a context of molecular exploitation. Based on a unique protocol, we created mammalian fixed collections, simulated the impact of time on preservation using an artificial ageing treatment and followed the evolution of specimens' DNA quality. DNA extraction yield, purity, visual integrity and qualitative and quantitative ability to amplify the Cox1 gene were assessed. Our results show that both RCL2 and ethanol exhibit better performances than formalin. They do not impair DNA extraction yield, and more importantly, DNA alteration is delayed over the preservation step. The use of RCL2 or ethanol as fixative in biological collections may insure a better exploitation of the genetic resources they propose.

Middle Eocene rodents from Peruvian Amazonia reveal the pattern and timing of caviomorph origins and biogeography.

The long-term isolation of South America during most of the Cenozoic produced a highly peculiar terrestrial vertebrate biota, with a wide array of mammal groups, among which caviomorph rodents and platyrrhine primates are Mid-Cenozoic immigrants. In the absence of indisputable pre-Oligocene South American rodents or primates, the mode, timing and biogeography of these extraordinary dispersals remained debated. Here, we describe South America's oldest known rodents, based on a new diverse caviomorph assemblage from the late Middle Eocene (approx. 41 Ma) of Peru, including five small rodents with three stem caviomorphs. Instead of being tied to the Eocene/Oligocene global cooling and drying episode (approx. 34 Ma), as previously considered, the arrival of caviomorphs and their initial radiation in South America probably occurred under much warmer and wetter conditions, around the Mid-Eocene Climatic Optimum. Our phylogenetic results reaffirm the African origin of South American rodents and support a trans-Atlantic dispersal of these mammals during Middle Eocene times. This discovery further extends the gap (approx. 15 Myr) between first appearances of rodents and primates in South America.

Ancient DNA reveals male diffusion through the Neolithic Mediterranean route.

The Neolithic is a key period in the history of the European settlement. Although archaeological and present-day genetic data suggest several hypotheses regarding the human migration patterns at this period, validation of these hypotheses with the use of ancient genetic data has been limited. In this context, we studied DNA extracted from 53 individuals buried in a necropolis used by a French local community 5,000 y ago. The relatively good DNA preservation of the samples allowed us to obtain autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and/or mtDNA data for 29 of the 53 samples studied. From these datasets, we established close parental relationships within the necropolis and determined maternal and paternal lineages as well as the absence of an allele associated with lactase persistence, probably carried by Neolithic cultures of central Europe. Our study provides an integrative view of the genetic past in southern France at the end of the Neolithic period. Furthermore, the Y-haplotype lineages characterized and the study of their current repartition in European populations confirm a greater influence of the Mediterranean than the Central European route in the peopling of southern Europe during the Neolithic transition.