Scientists reconstruct woolly mammoth genome

Scientists have decoded the genome of the woolly mammoth by analysing hairs plucked from carcasses recovered from the Siberian permafrost.The feat was hailed as a milestone in genetic science yesterday and is the first time an extinct animal has had its genome sequenced. "It's an absolute first to have a genome sequence of an extinct animal, that's really a milestone," said Michael Hofreiter at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.The first draft of the genetic code reveals that mammoths split into two groups around 2m years ago. One of the groups became extinct around 45,000 years ago, while the other is thought to have lived on, to as recently as 10,000 years ago.The achievement is a startling sign of the rapid progress genetics has made in recent decades. In 2003, scientists announced that the 13-year effort to read the human genome had finally been completed, at...

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