• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Monday, September 8, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Biology

Ancient DNA found in soil samples reveals mammoths, Yukon wild horses survived thousands of years longer than believed

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
December 8, 2021
in Biology
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Pleistocene
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

HAMILTON, Dec. 8, 2021 — Mere spoonsful of soil pulled from Canada’s permafrost are opening vast windows into ancient life in the Yukon, revealing rich new information and rewriting previous beliefs about the extinction dynamics, dates and survival of megafauna like mammoths, horses and other long-lost life forms.

Pleistocene

Credit: Julius Csotonyi

HAMILTON, Dec. 8, 2021 — Mere spoonsful of soil pulled from Canada’s permafrost are opening vast windows into ancient life in the Yukon, revealing rich new information and rewriting previous beliefs about the extinction dynamics, dates and survival of megafauna like mammoths, horses and other long-lost life forms.

In a new paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from McMaster University, the University of Alberta, the American Museum of Natural History and the Yukon government present a 30,000-year DNA record of past environments, drawn from cored permafrost sediments extracted from the Klondike region of central Yukon.

Researchers used DNA capture-enrichment technology developed at McMaster to isolate and rebuild, in remarkable detail, the fluctuating animal and plant communities at different time points during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, an unstable climatic period 11,000-14,000 years ago when a number of large species such as mammoths, mastodons and sabre-toothed cats disappeared.

They reconstructed the ancient ecosystems using tiny soil samples which contain billions of microscopic genomic sequences from animal and plant species.

The analysis reveals that mammoths and horses were already in steep decline prior to the climatic instability, but they did not immediately disappear due to human overhunting as previously thought. In fact, the DNA evidence shows that both the woolly mammoth and North American horse persisted until as recently as 5,000 years ago, bringing them into the mid-Holocene, the interval beginning roughly 11,000 years ago that we live in today. 

Through the early Holocene the Yukon environment continued to experience massive change. Formerly rich grasslands—the “Mammoth Steppe”—­were overrun with shrubs and mosses, species no longer held in check by large grazing herds of mammoths, horses and bison. Today, grasslands do not prosper in northern North America, in part because there are no megafaunal “ecological engineers” to manage them. 

“The rich data provides a unique window into the population dynamics of megafuana and nuances the discussion around their extinction through more subtle reconstructions of past ecosystems” says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, a lead author on the paper and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre.

This work builds on previous research by McMaster scientists who had determined woolly mammoths and the North American horse were likely present in the Yukon approximately 9,700 years ago. Better techniques and further investigation have since refined the earlier analysis and pushed forward the date even closer to contemporary time. 

“Now that we have these technologies, we realize how much life-history information is stored in permafrost,”explains Tyler Murchie, a postdoctoral researcher in McMaster’s Department of Anthropology and a lead author of the study.

“The amount of genetic data in permafrost is quite enormous and really allows for a scale of ecosystem and evolutionary reconstruction that is unparalleled with other methods to date” he says.

“Although mammoths are gone forever, horses are not” says Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History, another co-author. “The horse that lived in the Yukon 5,000 years ago is directly related to the horse species we have today, Equus caballus. Biologically, this makes the horse a native North American mammal, and it should be treated as such.” 

Scientists also stress the need to gather and archive more permafrost samples, which are at risk of being lost forever as the Arctic warms.

Attention editors:  Photos, video and caption information can be found at this link: https://mcmasteru365-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/lawsoa7_mcmaster_ca/EkLz3bEAMAlFqJeee90c_S8B22kidrq2iRV-bMIwS2hFdA?e=9LTl6y

 



Journal

Nature Communications

Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

Proteolytic Inactivation Follows Genomic Hypomethylation in Pseudomonas

Proteolytic Inactivation Follows Genomic Hypomethylation in Pseudomonas

September 8, 2025
blank

Starter Cultures in Cocoa Fermentation: Flavor Impact

September 8, 2025

Leaf Beetle Evolution Boosts Defense Against Shared Wasp

September 8, 2025

Evaluating Impact of Environment on Kenyan Donkey Welfare

September 8, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    150 shares
    Share 60 Tweet 38
  • New Drug Formulation Transforms Intravenous Treatments into Rapid Injections

    116 shares
    Share 46 Tweet 29
  • First Confirmed Human Mpox Clade Ib Case China

    56 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • A Laser-Free Alternative to LASIK: Exploring New Vision Correction Methods

    47 shares
    Share 19 Tweet 12

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

EA5181 Phase 3 Trial Shows No Overall Survival Advantage for Concurrent Plus Consolidative Durvalumab Over Consolidation Alone in Unresectable Stage 3 NSCLC

Closed-Loop Recycling of Mixed Polyesters via Catalysis

New Pathway Fuels Cancer Cells with Acetyl-CoA

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.