Scientists study prehistoric genetic code

LONDON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Scientists have pieced together part of the genetic recipe of the extinct woolly mammoth, the BBC reported Sunday.

The 5,000 DNA letters spell out the genetic code of its mitochondria, the structures in the cell that generate energy.

The research, published in the online edition of Nature, gives an insight into the elephant family tree. It shows that the mammoth was most closely related to the Asian rather than the African elephant.

The three groups split from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, with Asian elephants and mammoths diverging about half a million years later.

"We have finally resolved the phylogeny of the mammoth which has been controversial for the last 10 years," lead author Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told the BBC News Web site.

It is the longest stretch of DNA decoded to date from any Pleistocene species.

The DNA of several extinct ice age mammals, preserved in permafrost, has been analyzed before, but not in such detail.