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ScienceBiologyMillion-Year-Old Mammoth Teeth Contain Oldest DNA Ever Found
An international team of scientists has sequenced DNA from mammoth teeth that is at least a million years old, if not older. This research, published today in Nature, not only provides exciting new insight into mammoth evolutionary history, it reveals an entirely unknown lineage of ancient mammoth. The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) may rival T. … Continued
Jeanne Timmons -
ScienceBiologyScientists Find Mammoth Seemingly Butchered by Humans on Arctic Island
Kotelny Island sits high up in the Arctic, off the coast of Northern Siberia. It’s cold and barren now, mostly absent of humans. But over 20,000 years ago, this island was home to huge megafauna. Melting permafrost is exposing evidence of this past life, including three large woolly mammoth skeletons discovered there in 2019. One … Continued
Jeanne Timmons -
io9Books & ComicsWhy Bringing Back a Woolly Mammoth Is No Longer Science Fiction
Dr. George Church is a real-life Dr. Frankenstein. The inventor of CRISPR and one of the minds behind the Human Genome Project is no longer content just reading and editing DNA—now he wants to make new life. In Ben Mezrich’s latest book, Wooly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most … Continued
By Zach Ezer -
Tech NewsWatch a 500,000-Year-Old Mammoth Get Its First X-Ray
In this photo, staff members from the Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD) and the San Diego Natural History Museum are X-raying a 500,000-year-old mammoth skull fragment in the NMCSD radiology department on Monday. Man, those are some pretty massive teeth. The mammoth fossil was discovered six years ago, and now the museum’s requested NMCSD’s … Continued
By Attila Nagy -
io9
8-year-old Scores a Major Victory Over Creationists in South Carolina
An eight-year-old paleontology enthusiast has triumphed over anti-evolution politicians. Her proposal to designate the Columbian mammoth as the official state fossil of South Carolina has been signed into law by Governor Nikki Haley. The story began innocently enough: Earlier this year, Olivia McConnell—a third-grader who wants to be an Egyptologist—learned that South Carolina was one … Continued
By Mark Strauss -
Tech News
How You Transport a Baby Mammoth
This is Lyuba, the world’s most complete mammoth, in her most tender and comfortable resting place since she was separated from her mother some 42,000 years ago.* Lyuba was transported in this large, strengthened, padded case from the Shemanovsky Museum in Salechard, Siberia to the Natural History Museum in London, where the one month (plus … Continued
By Attila Nagy -
Tech News
The La Brea Tar Pits Remind Us That Los Angeles is an Ancient City
Conventional wisdom designates Los Angeles as a young, capricious metropolis—an underage drinker in the geopolitical nightclub—but it’s simply not true. L.A. is actually an ancient city, and the proof is bubbling right up to the surface at the La Brea Tar Pits, one of the richest paleontological sites in the world and the only one … Continued
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ScienceBiology
Dwarf Mammoths Used to Inhabit the Island of Crete
The smallest mammoth ever known to have existed has been confirmed to have lived on the island of Crete—and scientists believe that it was an adult which had evolved into a dwarf species of the giant beasts. A team of palaeontologists from London’s Natural History Museum suggest that the adults of this dwarf mammoth species … Continued
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Tech News
10,000 Year Old Frozen Mammoth Found Perfectly Preserved in Siberia
The BBC is reporting on the discovery of a mammoth carcass found preserved in Siberian ice for at least 10,000 years. The carcass is that of a juvenile mammoth, about 2 1/2 years old, that researchers have dubbed “Yuka.” Its flesh, and even hair, have endured astonishingly well over millennia buried in ice. Video of … Continued
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io9
The last mammoths died out just 3600 years ago…but they should have survived
We usually think of woolly mammoths as purely Ice Age creatures. But while most did indeed die out 10,000 years ago, one tiny population endured on isolated Wrangel Island until 1650 BCE. So why did they finally go extinct? Wrangel Island is an uninhabited scrap of land off the northern coast of far eastern Siberia. … Continued
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io9
Were woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats wiped out by a giant impact from space?
About 13,000 years ago, the megafauna of North America began to die out, and the world entered a brief cold period known as the Younger Dryas. But what drove the giant beasts into extinction? A controversial new theory claims a giant space impact was the culprit. Between this and the Solutrean hypothesis, this is apparently … Continued
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io9
A One-Ton Metal Mammoth Made from Old Farm Equipment
Drop what you’re doing — this is more important. Oregon sculptor Jud Turner has built a life-sized model of a Columbia mammoth skeleton, he’s done it with 95% recycled materials (mostly old farming equipment and agricultural tools), and it’s probably the most jaw-droppingly bad-ass thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I’m sorry, did you … Continued
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io9
No, we won’t be able to clone a woolly mammoth in the next five years
A team of Russian and Japanese scientists recently announced that they have discovered pristine DNA samples of woolly mammoths, and they will clone a living mammoth within five years. It’s tremendously exciting…but almost certainly not going to happen. Here’s why. What You Need To Clone A Mammoth Honestly, cloning a mammoth isn’t that much harder … Continued
