Detecting taxonomic and phylogenetic signals in equid cheek teeth: towards new palaeontological and archaeological proxies.

The Plio-Pleistocene evolution of Equus and the subsequent domestication of horses and donkeys remains poorly understood, due to the lack of phenotypic markers capable of tracing this evolutionary process in the palaeontological/archaeological record. Using images from 345 specimens, encompassing 15 extant taxa of equids, we quantified the occlusal enamel folding pattern in four mandibular cheek teeth with a single geometric morphometric protocol. We initially investigated the protocol accuracy by assigning each tooth to its correct anatomical position and taxonomic group. We then contrasted the phylogenetic signal present in each tooth shape with an exome-wide phylogeny from 10 extant equine species. We estimated the strength of the phylogenetic signal using a Brownian motion model of evolution with multivariate K statistic, and mapped the dental shape along the molecular phylogeny using an approach based on squared-change parsimony. We found clear evidence for the relevance of dental phenotypes to accurately discriminate all modern members of the genus Equus and capture their phylogenetic relationships. These results are valuable for both palaeontologists and zooarchaeologists exploring the spatial and temporal dynamics of the evolutionary history of the horse family, up to the latest domestication trajectories of horses and donkeys.

Identification of Taenia sp. in a natural human mummy (third century BC) from the Chehrabad salt mine in Iran.

Tapeworm eggs from the genus Taenia sp. were identified during the study of mummy remains dated to 2,286 ± 28 BP from the Chehrabad salt mine in northwestern Iran. The presence of tapeworm in this salt mine provides paleopathological information. Moreover, it brings new information on ancient diet, indicating the consumption of raw or undercooked meat. Cultural aspects as well as archaeozoological data are discussed in order to try to detail meat consumption. Paleoparasitological data are rare in the Middle East, and this case study presents the first recovery of parasites in ancient Iran. It constitutes the earliest evidence of ancient intestinal parasites in this country and contributes to the knowledge of gastrointestinal pathogens in the Near East.

Paleoparasitological analysis of samples from the Chehrabad salt mine (Northwestern Iran).

Paleoparasitological analyses were performed on soil samples recovered from an ancient salt mine in Chehrabad, northwestern Iran (2500 and 1500 years BP). Parasite extraction led to the recovery of a large variety of human and animal parasites, including whipworm (Trichuris sp.), roundworm (Ascaris sp.), tapeworm (Taenia sp. or Echinococcus sp.), lancet liver fluke (Dicrocoelium sp.), and horse and human pinworm (Oxyuris equi and Enterobius vermicularis). These results are among the first positive traces of ancient parasitism in Iran, and the analyses carried out on the Chehrabad salt mine thus contribute to the establishment of an ancient parasite database in this country. They also provide additional information about the lifeway of ancient miners, health, sanitary conditions, diet, as well as human and animal relationships during mining activities. Moreover, these results contribute to our knowledge of ancient parasitism in the Middle East, a key region for parasite history and host/parasite relationships.