Independent confirmation of a diagnostic sheep/goat peptide sequence through DNA analysis and further exploration of its taxonomic utility within the Bovidae

► Buckley et al. (2010) peptide sequence reliably discriminates between archaeological sheep and goat bones. ► The peptide marker is limited as a general phylogenetic marker. Wild bovids can confound peptide-based species assignments. ► One of the mutations in the peptide region has evolved at least twice, suggesting the region may be a mutational hotspot.