(CNN) A tooth from a mammoth that roamed the Siberian steppe more than a million years ago has yielded the world's oldest DNA sequence. The oldest mammoth tooth dated back to between 1.2 million and 1.65 million years ago. The second-oldest mammoth lived as along as 1.34 million years ago and belonged to a population that were the ancestors of the woolly mammoth, the last mammoth to go extinct about 5,000 years ago. They compared its genome with a woolly mammoth that lived about 700,000 years ago and some that lived not long before they disappeared. The youngest specimen they found and sequenced was from a tooth of an early form of woolly mammoth that lived more than 680,000 years ago.

Source: CNN February 17, 2021 15:56 UTC