Researchers from the Centre for Palaeogenetics have managed to analyse the genome from a 14,400-year-old woolly rhinoceros, recovered from a tissue sample found preserved inside the stomach of an ancient wolf. The study, published in Genome Biology and Evolution, shows that woolly rhinos remained genetically healthy until the end of the last Ice Age. The species therefore probably died out due to a rapid collapse of the population, rather than a slow demographic decline.
Researchers from Stockholm University have – for the first time ever – managed to successfully isolate and sequence RNA molecules from Ice Age woolly mammoths. These RNA sequences are the oldest ever recovered and come from mammoth tissue preserved in the Siberian permafrost for nearly 40,000 years. The study, published in the journal Cell, shows that not only DNA and proteins, but also RNA, can be preserved for very long periods of time, and provide new insights into the biology of species that have long since become extinct.
