Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Woolly Mammoths Resurfacing In Siberia

A fantastic LA Times article details the recent proliferation of woolly mammoth bones in Siberia. As permafrost in the region thaws, entire villages subsist on trade in mammoth bones -- so much so that a new word has been coined: "mamontit, or "to mammoth" -- meaning, to go out in search of bones."
The article has some wonderful details on the art and science of finding the bones:
"You need to have luck to find bones," said Fyodor Romanenko, a geologist at Moscow State University. "I don't look for bones. I find them. They find me."
At HuffPost Green, we've been keeping track, not only of resurfacing mammoth bones, but the possibility of mammoth resurrection.
Just last year, using only a few clumps of woolly mammoth hair, scientists at Penn State were able to extract enough DNA fragments to figure out most of its genetic sequence, making the woolly mammoth the first extinct animal to have its genome decoded.

HuffingtonPost
http://huffingtonpost.com

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