The genome of one of the last mammoths from Wrangel Island off Siberia’s coast showed that the population was riddled with deleterious mutations, they said. The Wrangel Island population was the last, disappearing roughly 4,000 years ago. The researchers compared the Wrangel mammoth’s DNA to that of two older mammoths, as well three Asian elephants, a close relative. They pinpointed a collection of genetic mutations in the Wrangel Island mammoth and synthesized these genes in the laboratory to test their functionality. “Mammoths were literally huge and globally distributed, and this massive range was reduced to a tiny island in the Arctic Ocean before their extinction.

Source: Taipei Times February 08, 2020 15:56 UTC