Mitochondrial DNA control region analysis of a late Neolithic aurochs (Bos primigenius Boj. 1827) from the Carpathian Basin.

Bos primigenius, the wild aurochs is believed to be the ancestor of European domestic cattle, Bos taurus. The geography and climate of the Great Hungarian Plain were well suited for these large grazing animals in the Late Neolithic. Till now, there are just a few aurochs mtDNA fragments available from two geographically restricted area, the British Isles and Italy. To increase our knowledge about the genetics of the European aurochsen livestock, and to investigate the phylogenetic position of a late Neolithic aurochs, excavated from the Carpathian Basin, mitochondrial DNA was extracted from a fragment of corpus mandibulae using ancient-DNA techniques and a portion of mitochondrial hypervariable region was amplified by PCR. The resulting sequence was aligned with GenBank sequences of 11 aurochsen. Our new sequence is identical with the sequence of two British aurochs. The 6000-year-old Hungarian aurochs shows a mtDNA sequence pattern, that occurs only among 6-12,000-year-old North European aurochsen, and it does not occur among modern, domesticated cattle.