Mammoth DNA Challenges Assumed Age

Intact chromosomes from a
woolly mammoth: can they
really be 52,000 years old?

Talk about exceptional preservation: “A complete genome has been extracted from a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth” found in a Siberian cave, says a recent report.

Woolly mammoth DNA exceptionally preserved in freeze-dried ‘jerky’ (New Scientist, 11 July 2024). The conditions of the fossil, it is claimed, allowed the intact chromosomes to be preserved from damage:

A woolly mammoth that died 52,000 years ago is so well preserved that it is possible both to read its full genome and to reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of its chromosomes – information that can provide unprecedented details about how the animal’s genes behaved during its life. The extraordinary feat was possible because the animal’s remains were naturally freeze-dried, preserving its DNA in a glass-like state.

Even so, scientists are aware that chromosomes fragment over time even under exceptional conditions.

But how did this DNA stay intact for more than 50,000 years without unravelling? The researchers credit the ideal conditions of the cave, which simultaneously chilled and desiccated the animal. “The sample lost much of its water into the cold and dry Siberian winter,” says Dudchenko.

The meat from the mammoth was like soft jerky, remarked the research team from the University of Copenhagen. Were they expecting to see chromosomes last this long?

Because molecules of DNA begin to break down when an animal dies, scientists have previously only been able to find tiny snippets of the woolly mammoth genome – but to the researchers’ surprise, the animal’s chromosomes were perfectly preserved. “This does not match with anything that we have analysed before that was 52,000 years old, so that was very surprising,” says Juan Antonio Rodríguez at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, a member of the research team.

They performed some tests on fresh freeze-dried beef liver to see if the chromosome structure would remain intact.

So they fired a shotgun at the mock mammoth jerky, ran over it with a car and had a former professional baseball player throw a fastball at it, all to try to destroy its DNA. Each time, the dried beef liver shattered into small pieces but maintained its microscopic structure, preserving the DNA inside. “We found out that it works – it survives,” says Rodríguez.

And yet forces other than time and bullets would degrade DNA. Even in a dessicated, frozen state, biomolecules are subject to radioactivity, natural unraveling and breakup of DNA strands, and the activity of some microbes or other organisms. Like they say, DNA begins to break down when the animal dies. To really know by experiment that this ancient DNA could survive so long, they would have to put it in an icy cave and wait 52,000 years.

Mammoths were champion tusk wearers. Credit: Beth Zaiken/Centre for Palaeogenetics. The demise of so many mammoths remains a mystery to evolutionists and believers in deep time. Like elephants, they were grazers, not not built for extreme cold. Something must have happened to them suddenly to preserve their flesh so completely.

Evolutionists never question their dating schemes, because the Darwinian narrative needs immense amounts of time. Most likely the mammoth died just a few thousand years ago, not 52,000. Humans hunted mammoths and mastodons. But like we point out in stories like this, deep time is not the solution to their problems. Deep time is the problem.