Swedish scientists found microbial DNA over a million years old in a mammoth tooth, the oldest ever recorded
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A mammoth tooth found in the frozen steppes of Eurasia revealed a shocking discovery. Swedish scientists found inside it microbes over a million years old, the DNA associated with the oldest host ever recovered.
The research, published in the journal Cell, opens an unprecedented window to understand how microbes coexisted, caused disease, and influenced the fate of the megafauna of the Ice Age.
Científicos suecos encontraron en su interior microbios de hace más de un millón de años
A microscopic archive from the Pleistocene
The study analyzed 483 mammoth remains, of which 440 were sequenced for the first time. Among them, a steppe specimen that lived 1.1 million years ago stood out. That fossil became a true biological time capsule.
The specialists separated the original microbes from those that infiltrated after the animal's death. Thanks to advanced metagenomic techniques, they managed to identify 310 microorganisms, although only six clades proved to be consistent and reliable.
What bacteria were found?
Among the detected genera were Actinobacillus, Pasteurella, Streptococcus, and Erysipelothrix. Some strains had virulence factors, meaning the ability to cause disease.
¿Qué bacterias se encontraron?
A striking case was that of a bacterium similar to Pasteurella, linked to deadly infections in present-day African elephants. This raises inevitable questions: did mammoths suffer similar epidemics that could have influenced their extinction?
The oldest validated microbial DNA ever
The most impressive finding was a partial genome of Erysipelothrix recovered from the steppe mammoth. According to the researchers, this is the oldest host-associated microbial DNA ever confirmed.
El hallazgo más impresionante fue un genoma parcial de Erysipelothrix recuperado del mamut estepario
For Tom van der Valk, the finding demonstrates that fossil remains can preserve biological information far beyond the host's DNA.
Microbes as allies and threats
The analysis suggests that certain microbes accompanied mammoths for hundreds of thousands of years. Some may have acted as allies, while others represented a constant threat to their survival.
The research not only contributes to paleontology, it also helps to understand the evolution of diseases that still affect living species.
Los investigadores Gavril Novgorodov y Erel Struchkov posan junto al mamut
A new frontier in science
The work opens the door to studying the microbiome of other extinct animals such as woolly rhinoceroses, wild horses, or cave lions. It even raises future scenarios about the possible "resurrection" of species like the mammoth.
