An international team of scientists have extracted liquid blood and urine from a 42,000-year-old foal recovered Siberian permafrost. Russian and South Korean researchers hope to use the preserved fluids to clone the ancient horse species.

Last summer, scientists at the Mammoth Museum at Northeastern Federal University found the prehistoric foal frozen in the permafrost of Batagaika crater. An autopsy revealed well preserved organs and tissue, and researchers were able to take liquid blood samples from the specimen's heart vessels.

"This is the best preserved Ice Age animal ever found in the world," Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, told the Russian news service TASS.

The autopsy suggested the foal drowned in mud. Shortly afterwards, the mud froze and became permafrost, creating ideal conditions for prolonged preservation.

"An autopsy showed the foal carcass was extremely well-preserved, the body even without deformation," Grigoryev told CNN. "The hair cover also preserved most parts of the carcass, especially at the head and legs."

Grigoryev and his colleagues at Northeastern Federal University are working with scientists South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation on several cloning projects, including efforts to clone the ancient foal and a woolly mammoth.

Though researchers are trying to use the blood to extract viable cells for cloning, Grigoryev isn't particularly hopeful.

"I think that even the unique preservation [of] blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells -- the red blood cells or erythrocytes -- do not have nuclei with DNA," he told CNN. "We [are] trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved."

Researchers found a similarly well-preserved mammoth frozen in Siberian ice in 2013. Scientists at the Mammoth Museum and Sooam are working to piece together a mammoth genome using DNA fragments extracted from the mammoth.

"We're getting an unprecedented amount of access to mammoth samples through this collaboration," Insung Hwang, a geneticist at the biotech research firm Sooam, told a documentary film crew with the United Kingdom's Channel 4 several years ago. "We're trying hard to make this possible within our generation."

Sooam made headlines several years ago for their work cloning dogs. Many scientists have criticized the firm's ethics.

"Reviving species is controversial for a number of reasons, including the diminished quality of life for the clone, which will be subject to experiments during its entire life," reporter George Dvorsky wrote in Gizmodo.

Ancient urine details hunting-to-herding transition 10,000 years ago
Washington (UPI) Apr 18, 2019 - By measuring the changing concentration of urine salts at an archaeological site in Turkey, researchers are beginning to understand when and how hunter gatherers across the Near East began herding and farming.

Archaeologists estimate the switch from hunting and gathering to farming and herding, the so-called Neolithic Revolution, began around 10,000 B.C. But questions about exactly how and where the change came about, and how fast change swept across the region, continue to trouble scientists.

To get a better sense of the transition that inspired technological innovations and the birth of growing cities, scientists decided to study traces of ancient urine.

"This is the first time, to our knowledge, that people have picked up on salts in archaeological materials, and used them in a way to look at the development of animal management," lead researcher Jordan Abell, a graduate student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a news release.

Abell and his colleagues tracked the changing concentrations of urine salts over a 1,000 year period, around the same time archaeological evidence suggests humans at the ancient Turkish site began domesticating animals. Their analysis showed that around 10,000 years ago, the concentration of humans and animals jumped from nearly zero to one human or animals for every 100 square feet.

Scientists can't distinguish between urine salts left behind by humans and animals, but they determined the increase in the amount of urine salts can't be explained by humans alone. There weren't enough buildings to account for such a large increase in human inhabitants.

Across the earliest layers of the settlement remains, between 10,400 to 10,000 years ago, scientists measured very few urine salts. Between 10,000 and 9,700 years ago, scientists recorded a 1,000-time increase in urine salt levels.

The findings -- published this week in the journal Science Advances -- support the hypothesis that settlers began by corralling just a few sheep and goats, but relatively quickly developed the ability to manage domesticated animals and large scale.

The new research also undermines the theory that the Neolithic Revolution had a single origin point and spread outward. Instead, the latest findings suggest the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding happened concurrently across a large swath of the Near East.

Related Links
Darwin Today At TerraDaily.com

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Malaysia arrests Vietnam poachers, seizes tiger, bear parts
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) April 16, 2019
Malaysian authorities have arrested two suspected poachers from Vietnam and seized body parts from tigers and bears, a minister said Tuesday, as the country clamps down on rampant wildlife trafficking. The Southeast Asian nation is home to swathes of jungle and a kaleidoscope of rare creatures from elephants to orangutans and tigers, but they are frequently targeted by poachers. Two Vietnamese men, aged 25 and 29, were arrested Monday by a wildlife enforcement team in a national park in eastern ... read more