Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis of avian bones collected from the 4th century pit burial found in South Korea

Abstract Pheasant is a bird commonly interred in the ancient graves of Korea. The avian bones collected during excavation are sometimes too small to be used for morphological species identification. Since ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis becomes widely used nowadays for molecular diagnosis, we carried out aDNA research on the 4th century avian femurs (K-14 and K-15) for which the species could not be confirmed by conventional zooarchaeological technique. In this study, we revealed that the mitotypes of the current ancient specimens were almost identical to those of modern genus Phasianus DNAs reported in NCBI/GenBank, re-confirming the usefulness of the genetic analysis on genus Phasianus bones when the species identification of the ancient avian bones found at archaeological sites is in a dispute.