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Published online 27 September 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070924-11

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Mammoth hair offers new style of research

Study reveals valuable store of ancient DNA in museum samples.

Geneticists have pieced together gene sequences from ten Siberian mammoths, using tiny samples of their hair found preserved in the Russian tundra. The result uses some of the oldest DNA ever pieced together — one of the mammoths had lain in the frozen ground for some 50,000 years.

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