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Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed
geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"
My understanding is that the woolly mammoth is one of the first casualty of the infestation Earth by the human species : they went extinct partly because of the warming climate, partly because of overhunting.
Not to mention they still lack mitochondrial DNA. Without it you won't get your peth mammoth. Of course they can try to replace it with lets say elephant DNA. But that still wont be mammoth ;)
Not to mention, didn't we also have this story about how the proteins affect the transcription too, and the same piece of DNA can be transcribed in a dozen different ways or not at all, depending on how those proteins regulate it? It seems to me like in that case it's like saying they decoded half of it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Um.... I thought they used frog DNA to fill-in the missing sequences. Which is how supposedly "sterile" dinosaurs were able to give birth.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago, though some scientists believe that there were still pockets of mammoth populations on isolated islands as late as 3500 years ago.
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The mammoth mitochondrial genome was decoded a few years ago.
Mito DNA is much easier to sequence from old samples due to the fact that for every cell which contains one copy of the nuclear genome, there are thousands of copies of the mitochondrial genome.
They were quite recent: They survived on Wrangle Island (Artic) and St Paul Island (Bearing Sea) as dwarfs until 1700 BCE.
They were also found on the Channel Islands off California and disappeared around 40,000 BCE. They are still digging them up, preserved, in the permafrost of Siberia.
Humans did hunt mammoths, sabre-tooths etc.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Crocodilians do not come from dinosaurs, although they are related, i.e. their earliest common ancestor was neither a dinosaur nor a crocodilian. On the other hand, the earliest common ancestor of birds was a dinosaur.
Also, mammals existed at least 125Mya:
The oldest known marsupial is Sinodelphys, found in 125M-year old early Cretaceous shale in China's northeastern Liaoning Province. The fossil is nearly complete and includes tufts of fur and imprints of soft tissues.
Shouldn't something along the line of "we don't know whether they taste nice" be in there?
There have been some reports of Russians eating frozen Mammoth, but I'm not sure how true that is (I read it somewhere, but I can't remember where).
Here are some quick links I found on the topic:
link 1
link 2
This form needs a section for mitigating factors. Here, at least one applies: (x) Mammoth burgers are delicious.
>Well the placental mammals, like us and almost every other mammal, did not evolve until after the Asteroid event.
Wrong. There were plenty of mammals in the Mesozoic. And according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology "Eutherians first became common in central Asia during the Upper Cretaceous." Eutherians being the technically correct name for placental mammals.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/eutheria/eutheriafr.html
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Repenomamus was a Triconodont, which is its own category, not a modern marsupial or placental.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
the tasmanian devil is still alive and well
I don't think "well" is the right word to describe the Tasmanian devil's status.
Actually, apparently there is exactly 0% Neanderthal in us, if you look at the DNA. You can see the differences between Neanderthals and the common ancestor (since that's what made them Neanderthals), and you can see the differences between humans and the common ancestor (since that's what makes us humans.) The two sets just don't overlap. All the genes that made Neanderthals be Neanderthals are not present in us.
The easiest to look at is the mitochondrial DNA, since it's pretty small, and it's been mapped to death for both species. We just don't have any humans which show the unique Neanderthal mutations there. So at least there was no _female_ neanderthal in anyone's ancestry.
Now I'd be surprised if they didn't at least try to have sex with each other, given that in some places they lived in the same cave for tens of thousands of years. I mean, so it was short and stout women with sloped foreheads. Some people would still try to screw one, if one was available. And viceversa.
The more probable explanation is that, like any other combination of different species, the offspring was either non-viable (if the species are not that related) or sterile (if they're closely related.) E.g., see mules, or either combination of lion and tiger.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.