Free Republic

A scientific magic trick that pulled a lot more than a coin from behind the mammoth's ear. A preserved mammoth foot in a permafrost environment. Image credit: Love Dalen ============================================================================= Freeze-dried skin samples of a woolly mammoth found in Siberia have enabled scientists to create a 3D reconstruction of 52,000-year-old chromosomes. The achievement is a world-first for ancient DNA, and reveals which genes were active in the skin cells when the mammoth was alive. Shortly after the woolly mammoth died it spontaneously freeze-dried thanks to the weather, preserving its nuclear architecture in a dehydrated state that made it possible to...