HORSE TEETH PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT DNA PRESERVATION IN SUNGIR AND A SNAPSHOT OF MTDNA DIVERSITY I.V. Ovchinnikov1 K. Lid n7 1 , A. G therstr m2 , T. Eriksson3 , O.I. Kholina4 , A. Angerbj rn5 , W. Goodwin6 Department of Biology and Forensic Science Program, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, USA 2 Evolutionary Biology Center, Uppsala University, Sweden 3 Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden 4 Grand Forks, USA 5 Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 6 Department of Forensic and Investigative Science, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK 7 Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden DNA was isolated from three horse teeth found in the most recent cultural level in the Sungir burial site. <...> Fragments of the horse mtDNA hypervariable segment I (HVS-I) were amplified from all horse teeth. <...> The Sungir sequences cluster with the modern horse haplogroups L, K, and B as well as with the Late Pleistocene horse mtDNAs from Northeast Siberia and Central Europe. <...> The nucleotide diversity, pairwise difference, and that Sungir horses had higher diversity than other Late Pleistocene and modern horses. <...> Our analysis proved that DNA is at least survived in some remains found in Sungir. <...> These data along with the proximity of Sungir to the Pontic-Caspian steppeland favor the model of horse domestication in this limited geographic region. <...> Keywords: Sungir, horse teeth, mitochondrial DNA , values demonstrated Introduction Recent successful genome sequencing of an Upper Paleolithic human from Malta [Raghavan et al., 2014] illustrated an opportunity to carry out analogous studies from other Upper Paleolithic remains found in Eurasia. <...> Such studies are able to shed light on ancient migrations and relationship between populations as well as on possible gene flow between hominin lineages and modern humans [Reich et al., 2010, Raghavan et al., 2014]. <...> Genome studies of ancient people involving DNA isolation from anthropological bones and teeth often result in damage of large bones [Krings et al., 1997] or complete destruction of bone fragments and teeth [Ovchinnikov et al <...>