Thousands of years old mammoth poop comes to life in a Dutch laboratory | Science

Dubbed “a sort of microbial Jurassic Park,” a Dutch researchers experiment with 28,500-year-old woolly mammoth feces. The animal had been found in perfect condition under the ice of a Siberian island, writes loyalty.

The mammoth was found in 2012 on the Siberian island of Mali Liakhovsky. A special discovery, but which did not stop there. Because the mammoth turned out to contain well-preserved poop. This gave Dutch researchers ideas. Scientists took a small sample from the female animal and examined it for traces of bacteria.

The permafrost (an area where the subsoil never fully thaws) turned out to have done its job. For example, many viable bacteria have been found in turd. These have been developed so that there are now five different types of so-called actinobacteria crawling in a Leiden laboratory.

“Somehow it makes sense that we can bring bacteria to life, because permafrost is a big freezer,” researcher Gilles van Wezel told Trouw. “Still, it’s a magical idea,” says the professor of molecular biotechnology at Leiden University.

In collaboration with microbiologists from Wageningen, Amsterdam and Goes share Van Wezel recently shared his findings with biologists around the world. Is he afraid that the bacterium will end up living on its own, like in Jurassic Park? “Not at all. These bacteria are not that different.”