MIT Technology Review December 7, 2022
The ancient DNA fragments come from a Greenland ecosystem where mastodons roamed among flowering plants. It may hold clues to how to survive a warming climate.
After an eight-year effort to recover DNA from Greenland’s frozen interior, researchers say they’ve managed to sequence gene fragments from ancient fish, plants, and even a mastodon that lived 2 million years ago.
It’s the oldest DNA ever recovered, beating the mark set only last year when a different team recovered genetic material from a million-year-old mammoth tooth.
The new effort looked at genetic material that was left behind by dozens of species and washed into sediment layers long ago when Greenland was much warmer than today.
“Here you are...
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