Saturday, July 08, 2006
Gene reveals mammoth coat colour
The coat colour of mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago has been determined by scientists.
Some of the curly tusked animals would have sported dark brown coats, while others had pale ginger or blond hair.
The information was extracted from a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth bone from Siberia using the latest genetic techniques. [color, dna]
technorati tags: woolly, mammoth, coat, color, colour, siberia, bone, dna
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Sunday, July 02, 2006
California scientists reopen Ice Age dig site
News from Los Angeles: Scientists went back to work Thursday at one of the world's richest Ice Age fossil sites, digging the tooth of a five-foot dire wolf and the toe of a sabertooth tiger from the sticky prehistoric asphalt near Wilshire Boulvard.
About 10,000 years before the arrival of mammoth traffic jams, the two beasts likely got stuck in the goo at La Brea Tar Pits while hunting a camel, horse or ground sloth, said John Harris, chief curator and head of vertebrate studies at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which oversees the site.
Thousands of other animals made the same fatal mistake, leaving a treasure trove of well-preserved bones, plant remnants and microorganisms. [News and Fossils]
technorati tags: los+angeles, ice+age, tar+pits, sabertooth, tiger, fossils, wolf, mammoth
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