Genes in your hair

A paper in Science the other week revealed a new avenue for recovering genetic material from ancient and extinct mammals—their hair. The tough keratin follicles that make up hair and fur are waterproof containers for the bits of DNA trapped in them as they grow. This stuff is robust: the oldest sample studied by the researchers, some mammoth fur 41,000 years old, had been sitting on a shelf unprotected in a Russian museum for 200 years. Science News covers the story. This opens a new arena in studies of ancient remains, and while Jurassic Park-type feats are still firmly fictional, we will soon see amazing information recovered from museum specimens that were once thought barren, like the hairs in ancient dungballs and packrat middens.

_{Mammoth dung — Geology Guide photo}