Seeing double
Contrary to the belief of many scientists (as well as many members of the public), new research confirms that Africa has two — not one — species of elephant. Scientists from Harvard Medical School (HMS), the University of Illinois, and the University of York in the United Kingdom used genetic analysis to prove that the African savanna elephant and the smaller African forest elephant have been largely separated for several million years. The researchers, whose findings appear online (Dec. 21) in PLoS Biology, compared the DNA of modern elephants from Africa and Asia with DNA that they extracted from two extinct species: the woolly mammoth and the mastodon. Not only is this the first time that anyone has generated sequences for the mastodon nuclear genome, but it is also the first time that the Asian elephant, African forest elephant, African savanna elephant, the extinct woolly mammoth, and the extinct American mastodon...