From Woolly Mammoth Hair, the Beast’s Genetic Map is Born

Woolly mammoths lumbered for more than 100,000 years across northern North America and Eurasia. By 2,000 BC, the behemoths had vanished, falling to human hunters and changing climate.

Now comes news that scientists have sequenced nearly the entire woolly mammoth genome, using genetic material in hair taken from long-frozen mammoth carcasses unearthed in Siberia. The effort marks the first genome-scale sequencing of an extinct animal's DNA, which carries the basic instructions that determine an organism's type, development, and function.