The woolly mammoth went extinct thousands of years ago, but thanks to a group of Texas scientists were closer than ever to bringing the animal back to life.
The scientists found fossil chromosomes in a frozen, beef-jerky like substance of a woolly mammoth that was discovered in Siberia in 2018.
Erez Lieberman Aiden, director of the Center for Genome Architecture at Baylor College of Medicine and co-author of the study, explained, “Basically, the chromosomes were trapped inside a piece of freeze-dried woolly mammoth jerky for 50,000 years.”
It’s the first time a discovery of these substances has been made.
Olga Dudchenko, assistant professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and co-author of the study, in a statement per Chron.com, “By comparing ancient DNA molecules to the DNA sequences of modern species, it's possible to find cases where single letters of the genetic code have changes.
“Fossil chromosomes are a game-changer, because knowing the shape of an organism's chromosomes makes it possible to assemble the entire DNA sequence of extinct creatures.”
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