Animal Origin Stories: Myth vs. Science

How the Turtle Got Its Shell

If there's one thing that turtle tall tales seem to have in common, it's that we shouldn't underestimate these slow, steady creatures.

In the book "Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines", there's a story about how the first turtle fashioned a shallow water dish -- known as a coolamon to indigenous Australians -- from a tree, and tied the coolamon to his back for protection along with a strip of bark on his stomach.

Scientists writing in the latest issue of Current Biology, however, have a different story to tell.

The shells, the researchers found, are composed of 50 bones held together in a structure that evolved over millions of years, with its origin reaching back to before the dinosaurs. More than 45 fossils belonging to a 260-million-year-old reptile from South Africa known as Eunotosaurus show that the turtles' ancestors developed a shell as their ribs broadened and then fused together.

While there are countless myths and legends from different cultures around the globe about how the turtle and other animals acquired their unique traits, ultimately scientists pouring through the available evidence in the fossil record and the genes of animals living today to learn the real story.

How the Zebra Got Its Stripes

The zebra developed its stripes as a means of evading the bites of voracious, disease-carrying horse flies, according to a study published last year. Pest prevention might not be the only function of the zebra's stripes, which could also help with regulating heat and escaping large predators.

Myths surrounding the zebra's patterned pelage tell a different story. According to African bushman legend, back in the days when the Earth was young, water was scarce. A watering hole could be an important resource worth guarding, as a baboon once did, chasing off other animals who came near and building a fire to get through the nights.

One day, a zebra, which was all white at the time, confronted the baboon, and in the confrontation, got burned by the still-burning sticks from the baboon's fire. After being injured, the zebra ran into the savannah, no longer a single color but striped instead.

How the Baboon Got Its Bottom

The story of how the zebra got its stripes is also the tale of how the baboon got its bright red bottom. The zebra didn't merely lose the fight and run away. Instead, it kicked the baboon as hard as it could, sending the primate flying into the air and crashing to the ground right on its butt. The legend is meant to explain not only the baboon's anatomy but also its tempestuous demeanor.

Baboon behinds, of course, aren't the result of injury but rather evolution, according to scientists. Baboons spend a lot of their time sitting. Given that their buttocks are composed of nerveless callouses, they have evolved to do so comfortably for hours on end.

When a female is fertile, she alerts male baboons of her readiness with her swollen, red behind. The larger the swelling, the younger and more often the female tends to breed, according to a 2001 study. So the baboon's red buttocks is not just a built-in seat, but also a signal to other primates.

How the Leopard Got Its Spots

Certainly the most famous story of how the leopard got its spots comes from Rudyard Kipling. According to the British author and adventurer, the leopard first lived on the sandy High Veldt, where the cat looked much like its environment. Eventually, its prey left the High Veldt, grew stripes, spots and blotches, and headed into the forest where they could hide. Advised by a wise baboon, the leopard was told to "go into other spots" and soon realized how the other animals were evading his detection.

Kipling's story -- racist overtones omitted from this retelling aside -- wasn't too far off from how the leopard in fact did evolve spots.

Habitat and behavior, such as moving through trees or being active at night, can determine a cat coat's color and pattern, according to a study published last year in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Leopards, jaguars and cats with dark-colored coats typically are active day and night, and roam a variety of habitats. Cats with solid-colored coats tend to be active during the daytime and in open environments.

Read more at Discovery News

Ancient Ball Player Statue Found in Mexico

An ancient granite statue representing a decapitated Mesoamerican ball player has been discovered at the pre-Hispanic site of Piedra Labrada, southeast of the Mexican state of Guerrero during repair work to a water pipe line.

The 5-foot-4 inch tall sculpture dates to at least 1,000 years ago and portrays a bow-legged individual with his arms crossed.

“We can say it is a ball player because of the attributes that this statue has,” Juan Pablo Sereno Uribe, an archaeologist at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), told Discovery News.

“A helmet is carved on the head, while the waist features a yugo. This is like a belt but stronger to protect this part of the body during the ball game,” Sereno Uribe said.

Extending for about 1.24 square miles, Piedra Labrada has so far revealed 50 buildings, five ball game courts and more than 20 sculptures of various sizes depicting anthropomorphic figures, snake heads and snails.

The pre-Columbian ball player was unearthed in the biggest ball game platform, an “I” shaped court about 131 feet long.

“In three of the courts we found sculptures of snake heads. No other court had a ball player statue,” Sereno Uribe said.

Little is known of the game played at the courts.

“The only thing we know, is that they used a very heavy ball made with rubber, and they threw the ball to each other from one side to the other of the court,” Sereno Uribe said.

“In some games they were supposed to hit the ball only with the wrist, which explains the protective yoke carved in the sculpture,” he added.

The statue might have been carved by the Mixtec indigeno people around 600 A.D. It was found in two pieces, the head sliced at the neck, as if it had been decapitated.

Read more at Discovery News

Earliest Evidence of French Winemaking Discovered

An ancient limestone platform dating back to 425 B.C is the oldest wine press ever discovered on French soil.

The press is the first evidence of winemaking in what is now modern-day France, according to new research published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The evidence suggests inhabitants of the region of Etruria got the ancient residents of France hooked. (Etruria covered parts of modern-day Tuscany, Latium and Umbria in Italy.)

"Now we know that the ancient Etruscans lured the Gauls into the Mediterranean wine culture by importing wine into southern France," study researcher Patrick McGovern, who directs the Bimolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said in a statement. "This built up a demand that could only be met by establishing a native industry."

The spread of wine

Humans first domesticated the Eurasian grapevine some 9,000 years ago in the Near East, perhaps in what is now Turkey or Iran. Gradually, the intoxicating beverage spread across the Mediterranean Sea, conveyed by Phoenicians and Greeks. By 800 B.C., the Phoenicians were trading wine with the Etruscans, storing it in large jars called amphoras.

Shipwrecks from around 600 B.C. are filled with these Etruscan amphoras, suggesting that residents of the area that is now Italy were by then exporting their own wine. In the coastal town of Lattara, near modern-day Lattes, France, a merchant storage complex full of these amphoras has been found, dating back to the town's heyday of 525 B.C. to 475 B.C.

McGovern and his colleagues analyzed three of these amphoras to find out if they really contained wine. They also analyzed an odd limestone discovery shaped like a rounded platform with a spout, thought to be a press of some sort. Whether the locals used the press to smash olives or grapes was unknown.

Analyzing amphoras

The researchers followed careful standards for the artifacts they analyzed: Amphoras had to be excavated undisturbed and sealed, with their bases intact and available for analysis. They also had to be unwashed and had to contain possible residue.

Only 13 jars met those standards. The researchers chose three representative amphoras for molecular testing, and also tested two later amphoras that almost certainly contained wine for comparison.

The analysis revealed tartaric acid, which is found naturally in grapes and is a major component of wine. Other wine-related acids — including succinic acid, malic acid and citric acid — were all present.

This ancient wine may not have had much in common with what might be found on a tasting trip to Napa or Sonoma, Calif., today. The researchers also found traces of pine resin, likely used for flavor and as a preservative. And the wine contained compounds from herbs, likely rosemary, basil and thyme.

Today, one Greek wine called retsina still uses pine resin for flavor, even though glass bottles have removed the need for it as a preservative.

"It's hard for a palate accustomed to Cabernet and Chardonnay to get accustomed to a wine that tastes like, well, turpentine," according to wineloverspage.com, which also describes retsina wine as "neither subtle nor delicate."

The beginnings of French wine

Of course, ancient wines weren't just for recreational quaffing; they were also used as medicinal mixtures, McGovern said. More importantly, the limestone press contained traces of tartaric acid, revealing that the residents of Lattara not only imported wine, but also made it. The press was in use by about 425 B.C. to 400 B.C., making it the first known evidence of winemaking in what is now France.

The older amphoras, combined with the ancient press, suggest that residents of the area that is now southern France first imported wine and then started cultivation, probably with vines imported from Etruria. Shipwrecks from that region have been found with vine seedlings inside, according to the researchers.

Read more at Discovery News

LA Pollution Is Losing Its Sting

An "eye-stinging" air pollutant in Los Angeles is decreasing due to stricter vehicle emissions standards in Southern California and the United States, a new study that examined emissions of chemicals in the City of Angels found.

The chemical, called peroyxacetyl nitrate (PAN), is associated with eye irritation during smoggy days. And it's not the only thing declining in the city's air: Ozone is also on the wane, the study found, confirming ozone measurements done by other researchers.

"To most people the important thing is that air quality has improved, but as scientists we want to understand how it has improved," lead researcher Ilana Pollack told Our Amazing Planet. Pollack works with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in the chemical sciences division.

"Our work aims to interpret the past and present observations, with the aim of informing future decisions," added Pollack, who is also a research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) with the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Trapped in the basin

Ozone is both good and bad for nature. High in the stratosphere, it filters ultraviolet radiation and keeps it from reaching Earth's surface. Closer to the surface, however, it can damage plant life and irritate human lungs.

Both ozone and PAN are major components of smog in Los Angeles, Pollack said. PAN is formed in a series of reactions that involve compounds found in sources like tailpipe emissions, sunlight and molecules with different combinations of nitrogen and oxygen. PAN serves as a store of the nitrogen-oxygen compounds that can be transported over long distances.

The scientists compiled and examined data from research aircraft (some of the measurements were made by the team in 2010, some by others in previous field studies), and also included archived data from roadside monitors and ground-based instruments.

Los Angeles is particularly vulnerable to the effects of ozone because it lies in a basin, Pollack said.

"Precursor emissions and the secondary pollutants formed from them often get trapped in the 'bowl-like' basin of air that is created by the surrounding mountains," she told LiveScience in an email.

Vehicles still dominant source for emissions

Pollack added that her team has no immediate plans to re-examine Los Angeles for pollutants, but that she hopes to conduct follow-up studies.

"Although emissions of precursors have declined, motor vehicles are still the dominant source of emissions in Los Angeles," she said, but added that the improvement is encouraging.

Read more at Discovery News

'Tracking in Caves': On the Trail of Pre-Historic Humans

In remote caves of the Pyrenees, lie precious remnants of the Ice Age undisturbed: foot and hand prints of prehistoric hunters. The tracks have remained untouched for millennia and are in excellent condition. Dr. Tilman Lenssen-Erz of the Forschungsstelle Afrika (Research Centre Africa) at the University of Cologne and Dr. Andreas Pastoors from the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann are going on expedition to encode the secrets of the trails. Their idea: to involve the best trackers in the world in the project in order to learn even more about the tracks. San hunters from Namibia, also known as Bushmen, will be investigating the tracks. The scientific expedition will span two continents and seven weeks.

From the 9th until the end of June, the expedition will go to Namibia in order to prepare the San for the task in hand. The hunters are excellent trackers who can read details that evade others from trails. “The San are amongst the last known ‘trained’ hunters and gatherers of southern Africa,” explains Tilman Lenssen-Erz. “The tracks in the caves are going to be examined by people who really know something about them.”

The first press conference will be held on July 1 in the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann before team “Tracking in Caves” sets off for the Pyrenees; it is there that the San hunters will be investigating the tracks. Andreas Pastoors wants more information pertaining to the amount and size of the tracks: “We hope to gain additional information: e.g. whether the person was in a rush, or whether they were maybe ill or carrying something.  More information that will give life to the tracks.” The idea behind this is to gain a better understanding of the cultural life of prehistoric man: “Our biggest job is to interpret cave art and to find out what the people did with these cave paintings. We have to gather all information about the context of these images.”

Team “Tracking Caves”, which consists of scientists and experienced trackers Tsamkxao Cigae, C/wi /Kunta and C/wi G/aqo De!u, will then report on their discoveries from the Ice Age caves of Ariège in a press conference at the University of Cologne on July 17. The Khoisan language of Tsamkxao Cigae will be translated into English.

Dr. Tilman Lenssen-Erz from the Forschungsstelle Afrika of the University of Cologne and Dr. Andreas Pastoors from Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann are in charge of the project. The academics are cave and rock art experts. Tsamkxao Cigae works as a tracker in the Tsumkwe Country Lodge, lives in Tsumkwe; speaks good English and will act as interpreter. C/wi /Kunta works as a tracker for a professional hunter, lives in //xa/oba, a village 20 km north of Tsumkwe, which is also a “Living Hunters Museum” where the San’s contemporary and traditional living modes are exhibited.

C/wi G/aqo De!u works as a tracker for hunting teams and lives in a village ca. 20 km south-south west of Tsumkwe.

From Science Daily

First Foodies Expanded Diet 3.5 Million Years Ago

Our ancestors used to dine almost exclusively on leaves and fruits from trees, shrubs and herbs until 3.5 million years ago when a major shift occurred, according to four new simultaneously published studies.

During this shift, early human species like Australopithecus afarensis and Kenyanthropus platyops began to also feast on grasses, sedges and succulent plants — or on animals that ate those plants — the studies, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, conclude.

“What we have is chemical information on what our ancestors ate, which in simpler terms is like a piece of food item stuck between their teeth and preserved for millions of years,” said Zeresenay Alemseged, senior curator and chair of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences and a co-author on two of the papers, was quoted as saying in a press release.

Alemseged and the other researchers found the “chemical information” in ancient teeth from our early human ancestors.

They explained that teeth contain isotopes that lock in information about what the individual ate. Here’s how that works: Plants can be divided into three categories based on their method of photosynthesis: C3, C4 and CAM. C3 plants (trees, shrubs, and herbs) can be chemically distinguished from C4/CAM plants (grasses, sedges, and succulents) because the latter incorporate higher amounts of the heavier isotope carbon-13 into their tissues. When the plants are eaten, the isotopes become incorporated into the consumer’s  tissues. These include the enamel of developing teeth.

Demonstrating the sturdiness of well-preserved teeth in the fossil record, the relative amounts of carbon-13 in such teeth can be read by scientists millions of years after the individual’s demise. Your veggie lifestyle, or not, is therefore locked into your teeth seemingly forever.

The 4 new papers, Alemseged said, “present the most exhaustive isotope-based studies on early human diets to date. Because feeding is the most important factor determining an organism’s physiology, behavior and its interaction with the environment, these finds will give us new insight into the evolutionary mechanisms that shaped our evolution.”

The findings raise some interesting questions:

Were our ancestors broadening their vegetarian diet 3.5 million years ago, or were they becoming carnivorous?

What caused the shift?

An intriguing clue goes back to an earlier paper Alemseged worked on. He and his team found tools for meat consumption dating back to 3.4 million years ago. My guess is that improved technology and perhaps environmental changes led to our becoming more omnivorous then.

Read more at Discovery News

How Can You Tell a Fake Jesus?

A man in Australia claims to be Jesus. A.J. Miller is attracting hundreds of people to his seminars; dozens have moved to his land in Queensland where he calls his movement the Divine Truth. He says he remembered he was Jesus in 2004.

"There were lots of people in the first century who didn't believe I was the Messiah and were offended by what I said -- and in fact I died at the hands of some of them,” he recently told SkyNews. "Unfortunately they didn't learn love either and my suggestion is, even if you don't believe I am Jesus, at least learn how to love."

Other so-called messiahs have come and gone.

"People have done this since Jesus' time; it's not anything new," said Ron Burks, a clinical mental health counselor at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital who co-wrote the book "Damaged Disciples: Casualties of Authoritarian Churches and the Shepherding Movement," after being involved with the Fort Lauderdale/Shepherding movement for 17 years. "The apostle Paul warned of false Christs."

But why are scholars so sure that A.J. Miller isn't Jesus, and that his partner, Australian Mary Luck, is not Mary Magdalene, as she claims?

Although Jesus is one of the most studied figures in history, scholars debate many of the details of his life. Still, many agree on consistencies in his character. For example, the historical Jesus didn’t appear to seek power.

"There's a way of speaking in Greek (which has the same constructs as Aramaic) in the imperative case if you’re giving an order and expect to be obeyed. There are several times (in the Bible) when Jesus said things and he’s not using that case. He never said things in a way where people felt obligated to do what he had said," Burks said.

It's also questionable whether the first Jesus even claimed he was the Messiah.

"We have the historical Jesus vs. the portrayal in the Gospels, and we can reconstruct some reliable things about Jesus," associate professor of religious studies at Grinnell College Henry Rietz said. "We are pretty confident that he proclaimed that the kingdom of God is near. But claiming that he would be the king? Maybe, maybe not. His message was much more about establishing the social order of justice in contrast to the oppressive Roman empire."

Often, Burks says, people who claim to be Jesus simulate his attitude at first, and that makes them attractive for the same reasons people appreciated the historical Jesus.

"But once they get a following and a sense of control over people, power usually corrupts," said Burks. "What happens when groups like this progress is there is almost universally an extreme emphasis on money, sex and power."

In some instances, fake religious leaders have started out with the intention of conning people, but others start out meaning well "and end up deceiving themselves and others," Burks said.

"Once followers latch on and start repeating the leader's teachings, it becomes almost irresistible, and (the leader) start thinking, Gosh, am I really? It can be a combination of self-delusion and deluding a group of people."

Ultimately, things can end tragically, as they did in Waco in 1993 and Jonestown in 1978. To prevent such catastrophes, Rietz suggests that outsiders try to encourage a less good vs. evil approach.

"In my opinion, the guy in Australia is not Jesus; he's not the messiah," Rietz said. "We can certainly disagree with him but at the same time, I think we can co-exist; there's a place in this world for all of us. Often people in these movements think of the world in good vs. evil dualistic terms and we, in turn, portray them as evil, and that’s where things often become dangerous."

Instead, he said, we should try to "understand them as human beings and talk about our beliefs."

Read more at Discovery News

There's a Hole in the Sun!

During the latter part of last week, a huge void rotated across the face of the sun. But never fear, it isn’t a sign of the “End Times” or some weird sci-fi stellar malnourishment, this particular hole is a coronal hole. Though it may be a well-known phenomenon, it is noteworthy — it’s the largest coronal hole to be observed in the sun’s atmosphere for over a year.

Snapped through three of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory‘s (SDO) extreme ultraviolet filters, this coronal hole is caused by a low density region of hot plasma.

The sun’s lower corona is threaded with powerful magnetic fields. Some are looped — or “closed” — very low in the corona, creating the beautiful, bright coronal loops that trap superheated gases that generate vast amounts of extreme ultraviolet light, radiation that is produced by multimillion degree plasma (the bright regions in the image, top).

However, there are also “open” field lines that have one end of their magnetic flux anchored in the solar photosphere. These lines fire solar plasma into interplanetary space at an accelerated rate, often intensifying space weather conditions. These regions of open field lines, or coronal holes, act like fire hoses, blasting plasma into space. These regions are the source of the the fast solar wind that accelerates solar material toward Earth, which often only takes 2-3 days to travel from the sun to Earth.

Through the SDO’s eyes, coronal holes appear dark as there is a very low density of the multimillion degree plasma generating the EUV radiation. And as this dramatic observation demonstrates, to the eyes of the SDO, the sun really does appear to have a hole.

Read more at Discovery News

A Step Closer to Artificial Livers: Researchers Identify Compounds That Help Liver Cells Grow Outside Body

Prometheus, the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods, was punished for this theft by being bound to a rock. Each day, an eagle swept down and fed on his liver, which then grew back to be eaten again the next day.

Modern scientists know there is a grain of truth to the tale, says MIT engineer Sangeeta Bhatia: The liver can indeed regenerate itself if part of it is removed. However, researchers trying to exploit that ability in hopes of producing artificial liver tissue for transplantation have repeatedly been stymied: Mature liver cells, known as hepatocytes, quickly lose their normal function when removed from the body.

"It's a paradox because we know liver cells are capable of growing, but somehow we can't get them to grow" outside the body, says Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Now, Bhatia and colleagues have taken a step toward that goal. In a paper appearing in the June 2 issue of Nature Chemical Biology, they have identified a dozen chemical compounds that can help liver cells not only maintain their normal function while grown in a lab dish, but also multiply to produce new tissue.

Cells grown this way could help researchers develop engineered tissue to treat many of the 500 million people suffering from chronic liver diseases such as hepatitis C, according to the researchers.

Lead author of the paper is Jing (Meghan) Shan, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Members of Bhatia's lab collaborated with researchers from the Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin.

Large-scale screen

Bhatia has previously developed a way to temporarily maintain normal liver-cell function after those cells are removed from the body, by precisely intermingling them with mouse fibroblast cells. For this study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the research team adapted the system so that the liver cells could grow, in layers with the fibroblast cells, in small depressions in a lab dish. This allowed the researchers to perform large-scale, rapid studies of how 12,500 different chemicals affect liver-cell growth and function.

The liver has about 500 functions, divided into four general categories: drug detoxification, energy metabolism, protein synthesis and bile production. David Thomas, an associate researcher working with Todd Golub at the Broad Institute, measured expression levels of 83 liver enzymes representing some of the most finicky functions to maintain.

After screening thousands of liver cells from eight different tissue donors, the researchers identified 12 compounds that helped the cells maintain those functions, promoted liver cell division, or both.

Two of those compounds seemed to work especially well in cells from younger donors, so the researchers -- including Robert Schwartz, an IMES postdoc, and Stephen Duncan, a professor of human and molecular genetics at the University of Wisconsin -- also tested them in liver cells generated from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Scientists have tried to create hepatocytes from iPSCs before, but such cells don't usually reach a fully mature state. However, when treated with those two compounds, the cells matured more completely.

Bhatia and her team wonder whether these compounds might launch a universal maturation program that could influence other types of cells as well. Other researchers are now testing them in a variety of cell types generated from iPSCs.

In future studies, the MIT team plans to embed the treated liver cells on polymer tissue scaffolds and implant them in mice, to test whether they could be used as replacement liver tissues. They are also pursuing the possibility of developing the compounds as drugs to help regenerate patients' own liver tissues, working with Trista North and Wolfram Goessling of Harvard Medical School.

Eric Lagasse, an associate professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, says the findings represent a promising approach to overcoming the difficulties scientists have encountered in growing liver cells outside of the body. "Finding a way of growing functional hepatocytes in cell culture would be a major breakthrough," says Lagasse, who was not part of the research team.

Making connections

Bhatia and colleagues have also recently made progress toward solving another challenge of engineering liver tissue, which is getting the recipient's body to grow blood vessels to supply the new tissue with oxygen and nutrients. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in April, Bhatia and Christopher Chen, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that if preformed cords of endothelial cells are embedded into the tissue, they will rapidly grow into arrays of blood vessels after the tissue is implanted.

Read more at Science Daily

Despite Mammoth Blood, Cloning Still Unlikely

Despite the recent discovery of a stunningly preserved mammoth, the odds of scientists using it to clone a real-life mammoth anytime soon are still low, experts say.

"To clone a mammoth by finding intact cells -- and, more importantly, an intact genome -- is going to be exceptionally difficult, likely impossible," said Love Dalén, a paleogeneticist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. "Finding this mammoth makes it slightly less impossible."

Dalen is referring to the amazingly preserved mammoth remains found recently in the icy tundra on an island off the coast of Siberia. Some of the tissue was locked beneath the ice, and when researchers struck it with a pick, blood came flowing out, they said.

ven tissue that looks as juicy and fresh as a steak, however, can be damaged on the cellular level. That would mean very little useful DNA (the molecules that carry the instructions for life), could be extracted, the researchers said.

Stunning Find

Outside researchers haven't examined the tissue and blood that was reportedly preserved in this 10,000-year-old mammoth. but Dalen's conversations with the research team suggest the fossilized beast is in incredibly good shape, he said.

"Every mammoth that has ever been found, it's either its bones or dried tissue and skin or pieces of hair, so to find a piece of frozen mammoth that's so well preserved that there's blood inside is pretty amazing," Dalen said. "From a DNA standpoint, it might be the most well-preserved specimen ever found."

Holy Grail

Because flash freezing could preserve the cells, and possibly their genetic information, everyone in the field is searching for the Holy Grail: a mammoth that fell into a frozen lake, which then immediately froze overnight and stayed perennially frozen for 10,000 years, said Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Canada.

The chances of finding such a perfect specimen are incredibly slim, Poinar said.

Even if a mammoth were buried in ice at the time of discovery, it wouldn’t be clear how many times the fossil had thawed and refrozen over the millennia, he added.

Past mammoth discoveries have looked very good on the outside -- even shooting out what initially looked like blood -- only to later be found to have heavily damaged cells that contain unusable DNA.

"When you take back to the lab, you realize that they're pretty heavily degraded," Poinar told LiveScience.

For cloning, intact DNA is needed, as the process requires replacing the DNA in an elephant egg with a mammoth's genome, then gestating the egg inside an elephant.

But time and harsh weather conditions inexorably degrade DNA, splitting it up into millions of tiny snippets that are extremely difficult to piece together. For instance, a 2012 study found that in bone, half of the chemical bonds in DNA break down within 521 years after death, and the genetic material degrades completely by 6.8 million years.

Elephant in Disguise?

If the white blood cells -- or more likely, tissues -- from the recently discovered mammoth are in fairly good condition, then there may be longer intact DNA snippets, which should be easier to piece together, Poinar said.

Either way, the mammoth genome would probably be reconstructed by using the elephant genome as the blueprint.

Read more at Discovery News