A mammoth toothache: world's oldest bacterial DNA found in the mouths of mammoths

"An analysis of the bones and teeth of ancient mammoths ( Mammuthus) has identified some of the microorganisms that lived in the animals' mouths and bodies more than one million years ago. The study, published in Cell on 2 September, describes the oldest microbial DNA ever sequenced, and reveals that some species of pathogenic bacteria that have been linked to the deaths of African elephants ( Loxodonta africana) once infected the mouths of their ancient cousins. The findings offer "a good opportunity to get a global picture about what kind of bacteria or viruses we could find in this extinct species", says study co-author Benjamin Guinet, a palaeomicrobiologist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden."

"To investigate the relationship between mammoths and microorganisms, the researchers analysed ancient microbial DNA from samples of teeth, skulls and skin from 483 mammoths. The specimens encompass a range of geographical locations, from North America and Britain to Siberia, and date from the Early Pleistocene - around one million years ago - to the extinction of the last mammoths on Wrangel Island (a remote island off the coast of Siberia) during the Holocene, 4,000 years ago. The researchers identified 310 microbial species that were associated with the mammoth tissues. Many of these were environmental microorganisms that would have colonized the tissues after death, so the team first filtered out the DNA sequences of these post-mortem bacteria. This allowed them to focus on the bacteria that lived inside the mammoths when they wer"

Analysis of mammoth bones, teeth and skin recovered microbial DNA dating from the Early Pleistocene (around one million years ago) to the Holocene. Samples from 483 mammoths across North America, Britain and Siberia yielded 310 microbial species. Environmental contaminants were filtered out to isolate taxa that lived in the animals when alive. Some identified microbes are pathogenic species previously linked to African elephant deaths, indicating shared host pathogens across proboscideans. The results represent the oldest microbial DNA sequenced and could inform how microbes influenced mammoth physiology, adaptation to varied environments, and potential roles in population declines.

Read at Nature