eleblog

“A new study has determined that extracting elephant DNA from confiscated ivory could be an important tool to help wildlife investigations stop elephant poaching at its source.” - Zee News

“A large genetic study of the extinct woolly mammoth has revealed that the species was not one large homogenous group, as scientists previously had assumed, and that it did not have much genetic diversity.” - Science Daily

“An international team of scientists has unlocked the genetic blueprint of hair samples from ancient woolly mammoths found in Siberia. VOA’s Jessica Berman reports the researchers say the DNA will give them valuable information about the evolution of elephants and possibly other prehistoric animals.” - VOA News

“Taronga Zoo keepers took DNA swabs from the huge animals in Sydney yesterday to try to make a genetic map of wild elephant populations in their native Cambodia.” - Herald Sun

“Cambodia’s agriculture ministry has given the green light to plans to run DNA tests in Australia on 520 dung samples collected in the country’s southwest Cardamom Mountains.” - Herald Sun

“An international team headed by European scientists has been able to clarify the lineage of modern elephants, thanks to improved techniques for extracting DNA from a tooth, dated between 50 000 and 130 000 thousand years old. In a new paper in the open access journal PLoS, Michael Hofreiter from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and colleagues from Switzerland and the United States, described the sequencing of the complete mitochondrial genome of an extinct relative of living elephants, the mastodon (Mamut americanum), which diverged around 26 million years ago.” - European Research Headlines

“Conservationists said Friday they plan to send some 520 samples of elephant dung to Australia for DNA analysis, hoping the results will help them estimate more accurately the number of elephants in the Cambodian wild.” - International Herald Tribune

“Melbourne scientists are to run DNA tests on elephant dung sent from Cambodia to help work out numbers and monitor wild populations in the formerly war-torn nation.” - theage.com.au

“The tooth of a mastodon buried beneath Alaska’s permafrost for many thousands of years is yielding surprising clues about the history of elephants�and humans.” - National Geographic News

“A team of German, Swiss and U.S. scientists has announced the sequencing of the complete mitochondrial genome of the mastodon.” - ScienceDaily

“An analysis of genetic material painstakingly retrieved from an ancient mastodon tooth has pushed back the date that mammoths diverged from elephants by about 2 million years” - New Scientist

“A fossilised tooth found in a swamp has allowed scientists to work out the DNA of a primitive North American elephant” - Times Online

“Over the past year, unprecedented numbers of African elephants have been slaughtered for their ivory tusks, the Washington Post reported recently.” - WorldChanging

“A scientific breakthrough has been heralded as a potential saviour for tens of thousands of elephants hunted for their ivory. Researchers have devised a genetic map of Africa’s elephants which - for the first time -has enabled investigators to pinpoint the exact region where a shipment of ivory originated.” - Independent Online Edition

“A trail of DNA has helped investigators trace the biggest ever consignment of contraband ivory seized since 1989 to savannah elephants in Zambia.” - BBC NEWS

“Using DNA extracted from a woolly mammoth specimen recovered from permafrost in Siberia, a team of scientists from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States determined the sequence of 5,024 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA. Although that represents only about a third of the animal�s total mitochondrial DNA, it was far beyond the previous record of 1,000 base pairs sequenced for a Pleistocene animal.” - The Columbus Dispatch

“Researchers in India and from The Earth Institute at Columbia University have discovered that one of the few remaining populations of Asian elephants in India is actually two genetically distinct groups. The results of the study, which appear in the current issue of the journal Animal Conservation, could have far-reaching implications in conservation plans for the endangered elephants as well as other species on the Subcontinent. ” - Innovations Report

“Geneticists have sketched out the woolly mammoth’s family tree using ancient DNA found preserved in Siberia.” - National Geographic