The evolutionary history of the woolly rhinoceros, one of the representatives of the extinct Pleistocene megafauna, is still insufficiently understood in Europe and especially in Poland. A joint attempt to solve this mystery was undertaken by scientists from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Centre of New Technologies of the University of Warsaw (CeNT UW) as part of the WOOLRHINOPOLI project. The project is financed by the National Science Centre and will last until 2026.
Genetic analysis of the remains of this extinct species will be carried out in the Laboratory of Paleogenetics and Conservation Genetics of the CeNT UW. The team, led by Danijela Popović, will use the latest technologies to work with fossil DNA, together with high-throughput sequencing (NGS) on Illumina platforms, which are available at the CeNT. Analysis of both mitochondrial and nuclear genomes will allow to track changes in the genetic structure of the woolly rhinoceros population in Europe, as well as to determine how the effective population size changed until the extinction of the species. In addition, an attempt will be made to correlate genetic changes with climate, environment, and human population growth.
