Vikings Spread the Humble House Mouse During Ancient Conquests [View all]

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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/18/vikings-spread-the-humble-house-mouse-during-ancient-conquests/


House mouse; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/George Shuklin

Four-legged stowaways hitched a ride aboard the wooden 10th- and 11th-century Viking ships that braved the northern seas. The probably numerous passengers aboard hailed from Mus musculus domesticus, the small, fleet-of-foot rodent otherwise known simply as the house mouse.

Opportunistic hangers-on have accompanied human migrations throughout history. From the louse to the mouse, scientists have started using detailed DNA evidence from these species to see how these animals have spread along with our own settlements. A new study, published online March 18 in BMC Evolutionary Biology, shows that Norwegian Vikings brought mice along in their conquests, some of whose descendants persist to this day in the far-flung destinations visited.

“We can match the pattern of human populations to that of the house mice,” Eleanor Jones, of the University of York and Uppsala University and a co-author of the study, said in a prepared statement. “Human settlement history of the last 1,000 years is reflected in the genetic sequence of mouse mitochondiral DNA.”

She and her colleagues collected genetic evidence from mouse bones uncovered in archeological digs at Viking settlements in Iceland and Greenland, settlements that date back to the 10th century. The researchers then compared the ancient DNA with samples of modern mouse DNA collected from the same regions.