PhilipEdwin

A 2021 genetic study posits that domestic European Water Buffalo are genetically unique and may be descended from the native Pleistocene European Water Buffalo, Bubalus murrensis. That species was thought to have gone extinct at the end of the last ice age. The study's authors say: "All in all, a high degree of genetic diversity was identified in European buffalos, and a novel genotype was described in Hungarian buffalos by this study. We demonstrate that European buffalos stand out from other buffalo populations worldwide, supporting the idea that buffalos have not completely disappeared from the European continent during the late Pleistocene." https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.610353/full

Charts are below the post. Via Matt at Razib Kahn's Gene Expression. At the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution's annual meeting last year, Alba Refoyo-Martinez showed some figures which indicated on the PRS scores on pigmentation (lighter skin) for ancient samples. As Matt says, "we can see that that: 1) post-Bronze Age Europeans generally seem to have lower scores than the product of EEF and Yamnaya would suggest, 2) there’s no apparent obvious general trend to lower PRS scores along the Anatolian Early Neolithic->Middle Neolithic European trend line. But also 3) the samples that represent Roman Italy also seem to have lower PRS than Yamnaya or MN Europeans (and this is tentatively so for the very few Spanish Bronze Age samples on the plot with steppe ancestry). Although less so than the very clear signal in Northern and Central Europe."