Woolly Mammoth Genomics

Woolly mammoth at the Royal Victoria Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, via Wikimedia Commons.

What does it take to survive an ice age? Woolly mammoths may be extinct today, but they thrived and spread around the world during the late Pleistocene era. To see what genetic adaptations separated woolly mammoths from their modern-day elephant relatives, researchers analyzed the genomes of 23 woolly mammoths, including one of the oldest specimens ever discovered.

Read the article at the Science Journal for Kids: What made woolly mammoths ice age icons?