Jakarta –
scientist found ADN oldest in the world. DNA from 2 million years ago has been recovered from sediments in Greenland, Denmark.
This DNA broke the previous oldest DNA record of 1 million years, set in 2021.
“The DNA is about twice as old as what was taken before,” Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge told News Scientist quoted Tuesday (13/12/2022).
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 today. Today, the area is an arctic desert with few organisms.
Scientists suspect that the Greenland region was once a forest home to rabbits, reindeer and possibly even mastodons, elephant-like animals that once lived in North America.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the north [Arktik]we can go back twice as far in time,” Willerslev said.
Willerslev and his team got ADN it originates 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?
The oldest origin of DNA in the world
It turned out that this DNA did not come from fossilized organisms, but was bound to mineral particles in the sediment layers. This environmental DNA comes from the whole range of organisms that live in the region.
The team detected 102 genera of plants. Some still grow today in northern Greenland, such as dryas bush and vaccinium. But others no longer live there, such as cypress (picea), hawthorn (crataegus) and populus.
Fewer animal species have been identified from this DNA. However, DNA revealed there was an arctic hare (Lepus arcticus), a rodent related to lemmings and muskrats, geese and wildebeest.
There is also ADN of an extinct elephant relative, which the team tentatively identified as a mastodon, not a mammoth. Mastodons have lived in the Americas for many millions of years, but had never before been found in Greenland.
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(nir/nwk)