Million-year-old Siberian mammoth DNA breaks record for oldest sequenced

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A new study suggests that woolly mammoths and Neanderthals may have shared genetic traits

A new study suggests that woolly mammoths and mankind's ancestors, the Neanderthals, may have shared genetic traits.

Scientists have made one mammoth discovery – literally.

The oldest DNA ever sequenced – more than 1 million years – has been extracted from three mammoth teeth that had been excavated from Siberian permafrost in the 1970s and have revealed a previously unknown kind of mammoth, according to findings first published by Nature.

The mammoth DNA shatters the previous record from a horse that lived between 560,000 and 780,000 years ago.

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Ludovic Orlando, a researcher with the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, who co-led the study that yielded the previous record, said he had been waiting for it to be broken since 2013. "I’m pleased to lose this record, because it was a heavy one," he said.

DNA degrades into shorter fragments over time making sequencing the more than 1 million-year-old teeth a bit of a puzzle, but permafrost helps preserve the genetic data, Nature reported.

The scientists also used the genetic code from a modern African elephant to fill in the information gaps.

Love Dalén, an evolutionary geneticist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, who was involved in the research, said the DNA is "quite close to the limit of what is possible."

An illustration of the steppe mammoth.  (Beth Zaiken/Centre for Palaeogenetics)

"It’s not like everything found in the permafrost always works," Dalén said, according to Nature. "The vast majority of samples have cr—DNA."

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He added that 2.6 million years ago, when the Pleistocene Epoch (the last Ice Age) started, is the likely limit for ancient DNA in permafrost. "Before that, it was too warm, he explained.

The two oldest molar specimen that appeared from its shape to be from steppe mammoths (that pre-predated the woolly mammoth) are between 1.3 million and 1.65 million years old, Nature reported, and the youngest, a woolly mammoth, is around 600,000 years old.  

The teeth that appeared to be from steppe mammoths have a more complicated story, however. 

While the second-oldest specimen, known as Adycha, was a predecessor of the woolly mammoth, the oldest, found near the village of Krestovka, was not.

"We can’t say it’s a different species, but it sure looks like it," Dalén said.

Dr. Tom van der Valk, a researcher at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and co-author of the study, said the findings came as a complete surprise. "All previous studies have indicated that there was only one species of mammoth in Siberia at that point in time, called the steppe mammoth," he said.

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The researchers found that Columbian mammoths, that inhabited North America around 420,000 years ago, can trace their lineage to both the woolly mammoth and the Krestovka mammoth.  

Scientists said the study could have implications for sequencing the remains of ancient human relatives. 

The last mammoth went extinct around 4,000 years ago.