The world's oldest DNA: Extinct beasts of ancient Greenland
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- Опубликовано: 10 июн 2024
- Two million year-old DNA found in frozen soil has been sequenced, revealing a surprising picture of an ancient landscape. Extinct creatures including, unexpectedly, elephant-like mastadons turn out to be among the beasts roaming Greenland. Researcher Eske Willerslev explains how DNA found in the environment can be used to reconstruct the past as so-called 'eDNA' becomes a vital tool for palaeontologists.
Read the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s4158... 
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this scientist looks so happy, congratulations on your amazing work!
I just love that guy's smile. He is just gitty with excitement. Good for him and his team. Congrats!!
This is fantastic !!!
Eski is so engaging and explains his science in terms we can all understand. I'm happy that his years and years of research and toil have finally produced positive results. It's amazing to know that the DNA of so many creatures was identified in this ancient landscape. I wonder if plant DNA was able to survive as well? That would add another layer to the story of this ecosystem.
Eske du er for vild, forsæt det gode arbejde, jeg ønsker dig en tur til Stokholm ;-)
Such a delight to see someone doing what they (obviously) love, science is so much fun!
and we are literally scratching the surface here!
I remrmber a decade or so ago DNA from soil indicated that the Great Megafauna Die-Off of 10,000 years ago wasn't accurate, because they were still alive a possible 8-9,000 years ago. The study was North American soil, I believe. It's somewhere in my notes.
Paleogenetics? Exciting, isn't it? Also, challenging. Science can never become boring as technology advances. This footage is just a poster child of that kind!
Dr. Bullwinkle might be onto something here!
2:12 💀 i swear i had the same idea few nights ago 😳
Glad i was sub to this channel. I learned a lot .
Thank you 🤗
I'm always glad when I can re-derive some ideas that exist without knowing. It's a good way to know you're on the right track with your reasoning.
Off to Antarcrica to find permafrost from older times perhaps?
I am curious what percentage of the Mastodon's DNA was recovered? Also, how did they ID it as being Mastodon DNA?v Complete DNA would be mind boggling!
They let a computer puzzle together their DNA snippets.
@@unfixablegop For what percentage of complete sequence?
@@tominva4121 having worked with (modern) eDNA before, probably a very very low percentage. Usually we worked with snippets in the high hundreds to small thousands of base pairs (300 ~ 2000 bp). If that's the amount they're working with, that's not even 0,1% of the complete sequence. Basically only enough to compare to modern sequences and identify the species or genus.
Having not read the full paper and knowing tech improved since I last did work with eDNA, maybe it's a bit more now, but I doubt it's anything close to a single percentage point still.
@@Jskid666 Unfortunately exactly what I figured.
Nah, I Guess they got some sequences long enough to match a Mastodon DNA by blast
If the earth's temperature was 11C higher 2million years ago, then it makes total sense that extreme northern (and probably extreme southern regions) were more temperate and supported abundant life. It would be interesting to see what the climate and life was like at the same time period nearer the equator, that would have been unbearable, I'm sure. Also the water levels would have been much higher, so the coastline would be further inland than it is today.
11C on average. The equator would not have been much warmer, as winds would have worked harder to cool it off.
This is amazing..
This isn't the world's oldest DNA -- it's not even the oldest DNA from that part of the world. Mummified wood from a 45-million-year-old semi-tropical forest on northern Canada's Axel Heiberg Island was sequenced by genetic researchers at the National University of Altai in Russia, and found to be almost identical to the DNA of modern woody plants.
I believe they mean animal DNA
@@AngryDad. The authors of the study apparently haven't made that distinction, at least not in their press release, which has been picked up on many RUclips channels. I think it's good to correct the record, at least for those who are interested.
@@tdpay9015 well you know how headlines go. The writers don't even come up with them let alone scientists.
@@AngryDad. Agreed. I also think it might be interesting for some who appreciate the Greenland DNA study to know that the arctic has an amazing temperate history dating back tens of millions of years.
@@Aiel-Necromancer Links to sources are found in the wiki article on Axel Heiberg Island. You can find them in a few seconds.
Wonderful..
The nerd in me finds this stuff fascinating, the potential is to know the entire ecosystem of many different locations. Unfortunately permafrost wasn’t around 66 million years ago or beyond, that would have made some insane discoveries.
This is outstanding. Maybe an all expense paid trip to Stockholm for someone.
Svante Paäbö was the man.
I wish they told use simple things in their research, like how they knew to core the slope middle way up the sand slope and then know that was where the 2 million year old area was.
Woud it be too crazy to look deeper into the fossilization process?
I mean, we are now able to determine certain colours of feathers on dinosaur folliles. As far as I remember that is, because certain minerals of feather colours are changing in predictable ways when they fossilize and thus give predictible results in fossiles.
Perhaps there is a chance to identify how DNA fossilizes and thus calculate backwards how it could have looked before the fossilization took place.
Maybe we're dealing with mummified, rather than fossilized, remains.
Considering the very precise conditions needed for fossilisation to occur we are lucky to have those that have been discovered so far. Probably 99.99.99% of all life on earth has simply rotted away and left no distinguishable trace. Except deep in the soil of places which are now covered in permafrost. Like the DNA Eski and his team have found.
Is any ancient pollen viable?
What if, Greenland wasn't always so far north?
We could find DNA down in marine snow falling on deep ocean floors. Very cold down there (ice is prevented by pressure), and those are older than permafrost right?
I think salt is very corrosive and would likely damage the DNA. Deep lake sediments might be a good call however.
Marine snow at the bottom of the ocean? What are you talking about?
@@silvermainecoons3269 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_snow
Schmidt ocean institute hosted edna sampling missions in oceanic settings.
They were getting results iirc
I think that artist drawing of Greenland looks pretty similar like Alaska is now.
Awesome!
Cool
Wow
I feel like this guy is gonna ask me if someone stole my sweetroll.
what are the theories for no mastodon fossils in greenland vs very similar conditions northern north america? Finding a mastodon where none supposedly existed could just as easily be evidence against the process as for it.
Can mastodon be cloned🤨?
It would be interesting to go fishing in ancient soil layers for hominin dna.
If cold is a plus in this field, perhaps they should examine deep ocean sediments.
It is so skeptical, million years e-DNA sounds too good to be true. That e-DNA should be destroyed easily by the harsh conditions like UV-light, ions, oxidizers, radicals, etc.
Well, if you store it in the freezer, in the dark, in absence of oxygen, etc...
And those conditions may exist very well in nature. Mammoths have been found in Siberia, and people found the meat edible.. (I don't think I would try 🙅🏻)
One thing to consider, other than the exceptional conditions described in the video, is that u won't find the whole genome of any organism. Just small, short molecules that, hopefully, would be enough to identify the species
"harsh conditions like UV-light" - Did you hear "permafrost" in this video?
One can be too skeptical also...
I always thought from working in the lab that RNA is easier to get rid of, not DNA. DNA is a bit harder & add to that the natural conditions described. I can believe it 😁
What if its actually the future we are digging up and we are in fact the past. Our failure to fully understand time and our own perception of reality leaves us with so many possibilities that we overlook. Like why we can't fully comprehend ancient egypt and the pyramids. Maybe time moved much slower and for them anything was possible in a single lifetime. Or the possibility that they are actually still alive and what we see are simply echoes of simultaneous timelines overlapping. If every galaxy we can view is a swirling plateau due to black holes sucking them inward from the center, why is it really so hard to believe time might not be linear and is actually moving the same way. Seeing as how both gravity and speed alter time. Maybe all time is happening simultaneously in a pressurized capsule we call Universe
"The oldest DNA scientists could recover" would be correct.
Would be fun to use these techniques on moon and Mars soil
you want to go there? come on colonizer... spread breed disease civilisation wooohooui
I would think that would be impossible on planets and moons without an earth-like atmosphere. Even if life was once present by the time we are around to look for it all traces of DNA would be gone, having been destroyed by gamma radiation.
Animals and plants had hundreds of thousands of years, or longer to adapt to their warming world. If the world gets too hot too quickly, they won't be able to adapt and will die.
That depends on one's acceptance of catastrophism or an argument of the relativism of the dates you are giving with regard to the mechanisms of adaptation. I would not agree with your premise.
Not true for 99% of animals
So the climate of greenland changed from lush marshland to an Arctic desert…looks like climate change has been happening a long time.
Hi Einstein, nobody is debating if climate does change naturally. There have been periods with extremely warm climates. What is different this time is the vast emissions human activity has created. Do you think we can burn millions of years worth of carbon without consequences?
Why are you watching science videos if you do not understand the basics?
@@la7dfa thank you for acknowledging my point. If we have been only been tracking the climate for the last 50 years, and there were radical climate changes so that warm tropical areas are now covered with snow in the ancient past when no man made carbon existed other than a camp fire, you would agree that the slight temperature variations we are currently seeing can be the result of natural causes and not the cause of man. The best prediction s on the results of the Paris climate accords as making a .2 or 1/4 degree difference in world wide temperature by 2080, if everyone actually followed through and just didn’t give it lip service is pretty pitiful. Therefore, the minuscule benefits of our massive effort should give you and other alarmists a reason to pause and consider the changes we are seeing are the result of larger , long term, weather patterns, which can be little influenced by mans activity.
I’m glad this guy took it and ran with it but I hate when superiors or others laugh or scoff at someone’s questions and says it’s stupid like dude let them cook they may be on to something or maybe they aren’t and nothing changes
When you find DNA from a aliens, let me know.
First
Also notice zero dinosaur dna..
Geese are pretty close. Especially for the time frame quoted.
@@jamesdriscoll_tmp1515 alot of the ime we wonder if loch nesss made it or just eels.. and or if congo has some thunder lizards
Well duh Dinosaurs are 260 million years dead
Non-nerd Scientist!
At best, we're talking here about "detection", not "sequencing"; sequencing implies substantially complete genomes, whereas detection simply indicates mummified detritus from the post-Flood ice age. And (from a Biblical standpoint) we're then talking ~4500 years--NOT "2,000,000 years".
So, can mummified, finely comminuted, organic detritus from the time of the Global Flood plus its extended icy aftermath (~3800-4500 years ago), be detected in permafrost paleosols? Certainly worth the search, as collection methods and analysis become refined...
I’ll tell you about frozen animals…The continents broke apart 100 years after the global flood. Animals were separated by the split between South America and Africa. The Jaguar and the leopard, the eagles, possums and opossums, the tapirs, the greater grison and the honey badger and crocodiles were all separated by the breakup of the continents. Sediment layers and fossils buried by the global flood line up perfectly. Glacial striations go from south to north in India on top of the sediments deposited by the global flood as well as in South America Africa and Australia. Animals in the Arctic were quick frozen as result of the breakup and the continents moving north. People never made it to South America from Africa in the first 100 years because they were too busy trying to build the Tower of Babel. True story.
Sorry, but there are better uses of research money. Like bringing mastodons back to life. Or maybe not.
I wonder if they've seen virus sequences in mastodon genomes.
one day ...another species will be pulling out human dnA.. from the debris of our trash advanced civilization
They better be wearing lead suits to protect them from the radiation.
@@jimbocho660 if they are Silicon-based, they might get their form of ADHD😷
@@jimbocho660 they might come in a form post toxic and tentacular post anthro critters
@@rredding 😃😃🧟♀️👉🏼 silly con valley
Graham Hancock & Randall Carlsen are smiling now :D