Oldest DNA extracted

Stockholm: Scientists have recovered the oldest DNA on record, extracting it from the molars of mammoths that roamed northeastern Siberia up to

1.2 million years ago.

The researchers said yesterday they had recovered and sequenced DNA from the remains of three mammoths entombed in permafrost conditions; while the remains were discovered starting in the 1970s, new scientific methods were needed to extract the DNA.

The oldest of the three was about 1.2 million years old.

‘‘This is by a wide margin the oldest DNA ever recovered,’’ evolutionary geneticist Love Dalen of the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden, who led the research published in the journal Nature, said.