A genetic analysis of long-extinct Siberian mammoths has nearly doubled the record for the oldest DNA yet sequenced. The genetic material, from a creature that roamed frozen lands some 1.2 million years ago, pushes the study of ancient DNA closer to its theoretical limit—and reveals a new lineage of mammoth.
“I love this paper,” says Ludovic Orlando, a paleogeneticist at Paul Sabatier University whose team previously held the record for oldest DNA sequenced, from a 750,000-year-old horse. “I have been waiting since 2013 [for] our world record for the oldest genome to be broken.”
…that anyone believes. There’s that Miocene plant, that Triassic halophile, and more than one supposed dinosaur DNA that thankfully never actually got published.
Does it fit in with prior knowledge? Were the methods used sufficiently careful? Can the result be replicated? I recall a bit of claimed Triceratops sequence, never published, that was identical to the sequence of a modern turkey. It seems more likely that the worker managed to sequence his lunch than that a real Triceratops would match a modern bird.
I think that the purported dinosaur DNA matched mammalian sequences more than it did living reptiles or birds. It was a case of sequencing one’s technician, or onesself.