Oldest DNA Ever Found Belongs to Million-Year-Old Mammoth
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Because state-of-the-art genetic sequencing is bonkers good, scientists are making DNA-related discoveries all the time. Including ones that are exceptionally funky. Now, a team of scientists in Sweden says it has a partial sequence of a genome belonging to a million-plus-year-old mammoth. And the newly discovered DNA is, in fact, the oldest in the world.
Science News reported on the discovery, which scientists were able to make thanks to a trio of mammoth-tooth specimens. Archaeologists excavated the specimens (immediately below) in the Siberian Permafrost in the 1970s, but it’s only recently that scientists have had the technology necessary to sequence their DNA so deeply.