10,000 Years of Beef
April 23rd, 02009 by Alexander Rose
The Washington Post is carrying an interesting story on the recently completed cow genome: “Cow’s DNA Sequence Reveals Mankind’s Influence Over Last 10,000 Years.” Most interesting is what was learned by looking closely at such a domesticated beast. The scientists were able to clearly see where selective breeding has radically changed the animal that we now recognize as a cow. And did I mention that the name of the cow is Dominette, how great is that?
Hidden in her [the cow below named L1 Dominette 01449] roughly 22,000 genes are hints of how natural selection sculpted the bovine body and personality over the last 60 million years, and how man greatly enhanced the job over the last 10,000.
This undated handout photo provided by the Agriculture Department shows a Hereford cow, named L1 Dominette 01449, with her calf on the rangeland of the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Livestock and Range Research Laboratory in Miles City, Montana. (AP Photo/Michael MacNeil, Agriculture Department)
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Long Term Thinking, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on April 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Great article. My favorite line, describing the cows’ evolution, could be about us.
“The result is an animal that lives peacefully in herds and grows large on low-quality food…”
Okay, not peacefully, but maybe we’ll evolve :-)