Freeze-dried woolly mammoths share their genetic secrets with scientists

Nature’s impeccable preservation of the creatures indicates that intact pieces of the past may still be out there.

BY Lizette Ortega

A 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth was impeccably freeze-dried by nature, its swatches of fur remaining intact — remarkably enough — and allowing a global team of scientists to reconstruct the creature’s three-dimensional genome for the first time.

A study published Thursday in the journal Cell about mammoths inspires a new way of looking at ancient DNA samples that may hold more information about the past than previously thought.

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