Ancient Cave Bear DNA Extracted and Decoded

diamond writes "The BBC reports that 'scientists have extracted and decoded the DNA of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago.' The sequencing technique could also work for Neanderthals. However, 'the idea of obtaining DNA from dinosaurs, depicted in the film Jurassic Park, remains science fiction.' Also reported by Nature Magazine."

Comments

Re:Anything is possible

[Fortyseven]

Here's a couple updates on that.

Re:didn't they find t. rex soft tissue recently?

[Rei]

There may be hundreds of thousands of types of biomolecules in your average cell. DNA is one of the less stable among them. Finding the more stable molecules isn't that big of a deal; it's the less stable ones that we want.