TUFTS of frozen woolly mammoth hair have yielded a rough draft of the dead beast’s genome. It is the most successful attempt yet at sequencing the DNA of an ancient extinct animal, and could not only offer clues to why the mammoths died out, but also mean we are one step closer to bringing them back to life.
Sequencing extinct organisms is tricky because DNA strands quickly degrade into short fragments. DNA from bacteria and fungi growing on the decomposing body can also flood in, producing an indecipherable mess of DNA.
Stephan Schuster from Pennsylvania State University in University Park…
