Article: Extinct mammoth DNA decoded

Extinct mammoth DNA decoded
By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter

Scientists have pieced together part of the genetic recipe of the extinct
woolly mammoth.

The 5,000 DNA letters spell out the genetic code of its mitochondria, the
structures in the cell that generate energy.

The research, published in the online edition of Nature, gives an insight
into the elephant family tree.

It shows that the mammoth was most closely related to the Asian rather than
the African elephant.

The three groups split from a common ancestor about six million years ago,
with Asian elephants and mammoths diverging about half a million years
later.

"We have finally resolved the phylogeny of the mammoth which has been
controversial for the last 10 years," lead author Michael Hofreiter of the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told
the BBC News website.

Ice age wanderer
Mammoths lived in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America between about 1.6
million years ago and 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch.

The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius , with its covering of shaggy
hair, was adapted to the extremes of the ice ages.

The DNA of several extinct ice age mammals, preserved in permafrost, has
been analysed before, but not in such detail.

"It is the longest stretch of DNA [decoded to date] from any Pleistocene
species," said Professor Hofreiter.

Full Text at the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4535190.stm

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


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