Jaime Lira Garrido is a MSCA post-doctoral researcher and a member of the AGES team.
Contact:
Email: jaime.lira@univ-tlse3.fr
Orcid ID: 0000-0002-0702-1344
Twitter: @ZephyrusProject
Biosketch:
Jaime Lira Garrido is a researcher interested in the fields of evolutionary biology, population genomics and domestication. Jaime obtained his University Degree in Biology and his PhD at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). In his PhD project, Jaime studied horse domestication in the Iberian Peninsula analysing ancient mitochondrial DNA. He studied Pleistocene and Holocene Equus Iberian samples, detecting the main Iberian maternal lineages. Further, he analysed the population dynamic of the Iberian horses under different paleoenvironmental conditions and finally, he identified exclusively ancient Iberian maternal lineages in modern Iberian domestic horses.
Moreover, he has been fully involved in archaeo-paleontological field seasons in different Iberian sites. He has been engaged in Pleistocene and Holocene mammals remains analyses, specially Equus, gaining a great expertise in the taxonomical identification through morphology and biometry (wild and domestic horses, asses and hydruntines). Combined with the ancient DNA practices, these studies provided him the opportunity to obtain an integrative common vision of research, maximizing the information recovered from the remains and interacting with collaborators across a diversity of scientific fields from Humanities and Biosciences.
Jaime was awarded a Marie Skłodowska Curie Action PF-EF in March 2022. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in the AGES group, performing the project Marie Curie 101062645 HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-2021-PF-01 Extinction, replacement and trade: Tracking 100.000 years of horse evolution in Iberia (ZEPHYRUS), led by Prof. Ludovic Orlando. Leveraging the full potential of state-of-the-art methods in ancient genomics, ZEPHYRUS explores how the physical traits of Iberian horses have changed since the Palaeolithic and how different equine civilizations have remodelled the Iberian horses through space and time.
Selected publications
- Martín et al. (2022) Husbandry and wild animal exploitation at El Mirador cave. Characteristics and evolution from a multidisciplinary approach. In Prehistoric herders and farmers. A transdisciplinary overview to the archaeological record from El Mirador cave (Atapuerca, Burgos). Allué, Martín & Vergès (Eds.). Springer (Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeological Series), pp. 225-250.
- Librado et al. (2021) The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes. Nature, 598: 634-640.
- Arsuaga et al. (2017) Evidence of paleoecological changes and Mousterian occupations at the Galería de las Estatuas site (sierra de Atapuerca, northern Iberian plateau, Spain). Quaternary Research 88, 345-367.
ZEPHYRUS communication and outreach:
- Migraciones, avances tecnológicos y patógenos letales: Una aproximación genómica a la Edad del Bronce. Desperta Ferro Antigua y Medieval nº76 (2023). Las primeras guerras de Europa. La Edad del Bronce, pp. 12-18.
- Invited seminar, February 16, 2023: Paleogenómica de la Edad del Bronce: reescribiendo la Prehistoria euroasiática. Degree in Genetics, 4º course, Current Science Seminars subject. University San Pablo-CEU (Madrid, Spain).
- Invited seminar, September 25, 2023: Protocolos de extracción y análisis de ADN antiguo para estudios genómicos y sus aplicaciones. Degree in Biology, 3rd course, Paleontology subject. University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain).