<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Scientists in Greenland announced Wednesday they had found DNA dating back two million years -- the oldest ever extracted -- in sediment from the Ice Age, opening a new chapter in paleogenetics.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"We are breaking the barrier of what we thought we could reach in terms of genetic studies," said Mikkel Winther Pedersen, co-author of a new study published in science journal Nature.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"It was long thought that one million years was the boundary of DNA survival, but now we are twice as old" as that, told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">They found the DNA fragments in sediment from the northernmost part of Greenland known as Kap Copenhagen, said the University of Copenhagen lecturer.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The fragments "come from an environment that we do not see anywhere on Earth today," he added. Frozen in a remote unpopulated area, the DNA had been very well preserved.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">New technology enabled the scientists to determine that the 41 fragments were more than a million years older than the oldest known DNA, from a Siberian mammoth.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">They had to first determine whether there was DNA hidden in the clay and quartz, then see whether it could be removed from the sediment to examine it.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The method used "provides a fundamental understanding of why minerals, or sediments, can preserve DNA", said Karina Sand, who heads the geobiology team at the University of Copenhagen and who took part in the study.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"It's a Pandora's box we're just about to open up", she added.</div><div style="text-align: justify; ">- Species adaptability -</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The "rivers running through the environment transported minerals and organic material into the marine environment and this was where these terrestrial sediments were deposited", said Winther Pedersen.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Then, at some point around two million years ago, "this land mass beneath the water was raised up and became a part of North Greenland", he explained.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Today, Kap Copenhagen is an Arctic desert, where different types of deposits, including plant and insect fossils preserved in excellent condition, have already been discovered.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">But scientists hadn't tried to establish the fossils' DNA, and very little was known about the presence of animals at the time.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The research team, which began its work in 2006, has now made it possible to paint a picture of what the region looked like two million years ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"We had this forested environment with mastodons and reindeer and hares running around in the landscape together with a lot of different plant species", he said, they had found 102 different kinds of plant.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">The presence of mastodons was particularly noteworthy, he added, never having been found so far north before. The discovery has also given researchers more information about the adaptability of species.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Two million years ago, Greenland had temperatures 11 to 17 degrees warmer than today, but at its latitude, the sun doesn't set in summer nor rise in winter.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"We don't see this environment anywhere, this mix of species anywhere on Earth today", said Winther Pedersen.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"The plasticity in species, how species are actually able to adapt to different types of climate, might be different than what we previously thought.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"And obviously, it makes us look for newer and older sites.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"There are several different sites across the world that actually have geological deposits that go this far back. And even further back," he added. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>