Ice Age 3

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.

Al Bernstein

According to reports, scientists have sequenced an extensive genome of wooly mammoths using their hair specimen.

This news brings scientists a step closer to “resurrecting” the extinct species through cloning. However, some experts doubt it could ever happen due to the many technical limitations in the way.

This particular experiment is regarded as the first ever decoding of an extinct species’ nuclear DNA, which contains massive amounts information.

Once interpreted, the genetic data will give researchers never-before-seen access to the biology and evolution of these amazing creatures, which started becoming extinct about 10,000 years ago.

“What our paper shows, for the first time, is that it is possible to sequence the genome of an extinct animal almost as well and as efficiently as a modern genome,” said Stephan Schuster of Pennsylvania State University, one of the two project leaders.

Just as exciting, the methods could be employed to sequence the genomes of Neanderthals, and early humans. The bad news is, the same cannot be done for dinosaurs because they went extinct too long ago for their DNA to be viable today, according to the researchers.

The reason behind this is that nuclear DNA resides in cell nuclei and it’s difficult to extract from ancient bones. It’s far less plentiful than mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only by mothers. Complete sequencing of the mitochondiral genome of the mammoth was achieved in 2006.

Baby Mammoth

And even though this next news isn’t exactly brand new, we’re guessing we won’t be the last to find out either. Apparently, a discovery of a preserved baby mammoth has been made some time in 2007. It’s kinda cute and disturbing at the same time. Poor little thing.

Check out the newest and saddest piece of news about the little thing.