Preserved Woolly Mammoth Discovered

Описание: Ever since the ancient Greek philosophers first put into writing thoughts about marine fossils, there have been efforts to understand the extinct creatures that once inhabited Earth based on the remains they left behind. We’ll explore remarkable new insights into the history of life on Earth in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s “Discovery Files”.

Woolly Mammoths are ancient relatives of Elephants that went extinct around 4,000 years ago. But one specimen frozen in the Siberian permafrost is revealing some of its secrets.

An international effort including researchers at the NSF Physics Frontiers Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice University and the NSF Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine have pieced together fossilized chromosomes found in a sample of skin from a woolly mammoth that died 52,000 years ago.

In most cases, DNA from fossils has long since decayed, making it nearly impossible to put enough genetic material together to learn anything about the organism. In this case, the fragments were kept close together in a glassy state akin to what happens when things are freeze-dried.

The fossil chromosomes allowed researchers to assemble the genome of an extinct species for the very first time.

In the process, they found 28 pairs of chromosomes, the same number and with the same structure as modern elephants. This made it possible to reveal a new secret from ancient history, which genes made the hair grow on woolly mammoths.