著者

毛利 俊雄 吾妻 健 石上 盛敏 川本 芳

出版者

Primate Society of Japan

雑誌

霊長類研究 (ISSN:09124047)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.16, no.2, pp.87-94, 2000 (Released:2009-09-07)

参考文献数

10

被引用文献数

7 8

---

We report a species identification by mitochondrial DNA of a partial macaque skeleton excavated from Shuri Castle, Okinawa, the estimated age of which is around the 16th or 17th century AD. Species identification by gross morphology was not possible because of the following reasons; sufficient parts are not preserved, no natural distribution of non-human primates including macaque is recorded in the Ryukyu islands, and the genus Macaca is highly speciose. DNA amplification of D-loop variable region (ca 200bp) was first unsuccessful with the use of previously devised sets of primers which encompass the whole region, and is accomplished by using newly devised sets of primers, each of which is designed for anterior or posterior portion of the targeted region. Sequenced DNA of the Shuri macaque completely agrees with a sequence of Yaku macaques (Macaca fuscata yakui). For the comparison with or species identification of Shuri macaque, we sequenced the same region of DNA (variable region of D-loop) from four species of macaques (Macaca fuscata, M. cyclopis, M. mulatta and M. fascicularis). Ample variations of substitutions and insertion/deletion mutations are discovered both intra- and inter-specifically. A neighbor-joining tree based on nucleotide substitutions is depicted with bootstrap values (Fig. 4). In this study, a monkey skeletal remain excavated from Okinawa is safely identified as a Yaku macaque by the use of mitochondrial DNA. This suggests a promising future of genetic analyses for archaeological information retrieval. It is also emphasized that, for the proper assessment of the genetic information from archaeological remains, fuller genetic studies of the living animals are critically important.