Memories, museum artefacts and excavations in resolving the history of maternal lineages in the Finnhorse

We used historical DNA samples to examine the history of a native horse breed, the Finnhorse. Samples were collected from private collections, museums, schools and excavations, representing the times prior to, during, and after the foundation of the breed; from the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century. We sequenced a fragment of mitochondrial DNA from these historical samples to study the history and evolution of maternal lineages of horses back to the early days of the breed, compared the mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity of different historical periods and modern day Finnhorses, estimated the effective population sizes, and searched for both temporal and geographic population genetic structure. We observed high maternal haplotype and nucleotide diversity at the time during the foundation of the breed, and a decrease in both measures during 1931–1970. In addition, we observed losses of some haplotypes present in the early stages of the breed. There was only slight evidence of geographical or temporal population structure. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to use such temporal sampling to reveal the history of a specific animal breed.