Swedish paleogeneticists managed to recover DNA from the teeth of mammoths found in Russia over a million years old. Research materials were published in the journal Nature.
Scientists were able to obtain mitochondrial DNA from the teeth of three ancient mammoths, which were found in Siberia and Chukotka. They were named Adycha, Chukochya and Krestovka after the names of the settlements where they were found. The finds range from 0.87 to 1.65 million years old.
According to a professor at Stockholm University Love Dalen, the DNA of these mammoths was so damaged that scientists had to read millions of short scraps many times. Getting their complete genome, he called a scientific miracle. As a result of the study, it turned out that two mammoths – Adych and Chukochya – belong to the line from which the Eurasian and North American woolly mammoths originated, while Krestovka represents a previously unknown line, the first mammoths from which inhabited North America.
The uniqueness of the discovery lies in the fact that the obtained genomic data are the most ancient. Until this moment, the age of the oldest DNA obtained from biomaterial was estimated at 780-560 thousand years. The discovery showed that most of the changes in protein coding associated with adaptation to cold in woolly mammoths were already present a million years ago.
Earlier, Pavel Kosintsev, an employee of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that the mammoth, the remains of which were found near Lake Pechevalavato in the vicinity of the village of Seyakha on Yamal, died as a result of an accident. The found remains were sent to Yekaterinburg in order to understand the date of death and the age of the animal. Leather and wool samples are prepared for analysis in laboratories.