Jakarta –
Scientists managed to find DNA that is 2 million years old. The DNA was recovered from sediments in Greenland, Denmark. Reported detikEduthe find is valuable because it breaks the previous record of the oldest DNA, which is 1 million years old, set in 2021.
‘DNA is roughly double the size of anything recovered before,’ Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge told News scientist quoted, Tuesday (12/13/2022).
Thanks to this discovery, Willerslev and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the ecosystem that existed in northern Greenland 2 million years ago. At that time, Greenland had a warmer climate than it does today. Today the area is an arctic wasteland and has few organisms.
Scientists suspect that the Greenland region was once a forest that was home to rabbits, reindeer and possibly even mastodons, elephant-like animals that once lived in North America.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be north [Arktik]we can go twice as far back in time,” Willerslev said.
Willerslev and his team obtained the DNA from the Kap København Formation, a series of layers of sand, silt and silt more than 90 meters thick. So, what creature does this DNA come from?
As it turned out, this DNA did not come from fossilized organisms, but was bound to mineral particles in the sediment layers. This environmental DNA comes from the full range of organisms that live in the area.
The team found 102 plant genera. Some still grow in northern Greenland today, such as dryas bush and vaccinium. But others no longer live there, such as the cypress (picea), the hawthorn (crataegus) and the populus.
Fewer animal species have been identified from this DNA. However, DNA revealed that there was an arctic hare (Lepus arcticus), a rodent related to lemmings and muskrats, geese and wildebeest. In addition, there is also DNA from mastodons that have lived in America for several million years.
This article was originally posted on detikEdu. Read more here.
(dir/iqk)
