Horse Fossil Yields Astonishingly Old Genome

[Still Waters]

Researchers have recovered DNA from a nearly 700,000-year-old horse fossil and assembled a draft of the animal’s genome from it. It is the oldest complete genome to date by a long shot–hundreds of thousands of years older than the previous record holder, which came from an archaic human that lived around 80,000 years ago.

The genome elucidates the evolution of modern horses and their relatives, and raises the question of whether scientists might someday be able to obtain similarly ancient genomes of human ancestors.

http://blogs.scienti...n-genomes-next/

[Lava_Lady]

Why does this article creep me out? lol... maybe that whole using DNA from an animal that is 4 to 5 million years old to keep the lineage of a modern animal alive thing. What if the ancient horse was a carnivore? Or worse yet, a vampire!! lol!

[Occult1]

Well, the 700,000 years old DNA of a horse is perhaps those of the lost Unicorns!

[DecoNoir]

There's a My Little Pony joke in here, but I can't seem to find it

[Harte]

The optimist's child and the pessimist's child comes to mind.

"There has to be a pony here somewhere!"

Harte

[marcos anthony toledo]

Now if only they can clone this over 700,000 year old horse to bring it back to life.

[Harte]

Maybe they'll give us free rides with cotton candy purchase.

Harte