Squirrel droppings reveal 700,000-year Arctic DNA record (opens in new tab)

Scientists analyzing ancient Arctic ground squirrel feces preserved in sealed Yukon permafrost burrows recovered DNA from an Ice Age ecosystem, including material from woolly mammoths, bison, horses, wolves, plants, insects and microbes. The DNA ranged from about 3,000 to 700,000 years old, with researchers describing the coprolites as an unusually detailed environmental archive from Canada’s remote Yukon territory. The study, published in Nature Communications, used permafrost samples from g...