A step closer to de-extinction

Four thousand years after the woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth, scientists have deciphered the genetic blueprint that may offer a key to bringing it back.

By comparing DNA recovered from two long-dead individuals, a team of researchers have sequenced the species’s entire genome — effectively providing a gene-by-gene instruction manual on how to build a mammoth.

Their study of the newly sequenced genome, which was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, offers all kinds of interesting insights into the animal’s past: when it first appeared, when it suffered from population bottlenecks, how it was affected by climate change.

Read more from the Washington Post.