Woolly mammoth among trove of ancient DNA found in squirrel poo
Researchers found DNA from woolly mammoths, bison, horses and American cheetahs in frozen ground squirrel droppings, revealing ancient ecosystems.
- A new study published Tuesday, June 09, 2026, in Nature Communications reveals ancient DNA from mammoths and cheetahs preserved in Arctic ground squirrel coprolites found in the Yukon, dating back 700,000 years.
- Klondike permafrost burrows act as "little frozen time capsules" by preserving diverse organic matter, allowing Arctic ground squirrels to create a detailed biological record of prehistoric environments across the region.
- Tyler Murchie, a scientist with the Hakai Institute, refined a method using molecular "baits" to extract fragile DNA from the samples, which Murchie noted provide "huge" information potential.
- Studying these feces helps researchers understand shifts between interglacial periods, including the last one about 115,000 thousand years ago, offering insight into the current Holocene period that began about 11,700 years ago.
- Evolutionary biologist Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University noted the findings "blow the door wide open" on understanding the past, as the team anticipates more results from pending squirrel deposits.
24 Articles
24 Articles
Scientists find woolly mammoth DNA while digging through squirrel poo
A huge treasure trove of ancient DNA from animals including extinct woolly mammoths has been discovered in frozen squirrel faeces in Canada’s remote Yukon territory, scientists said on Tuesday. The DNA found deep inside sealed-off burrows is between 3,000 and 700,000 years old, offering a rare window into how life has changed over the millennia. As well as DNA from woolly mammoths – which the US company Colossal claims it is trying to “de-extinc…
The DNA contained in the excrement of arctic squirrels, preserved in the permafrost of the Yukon (Canada) for thousands of years, makes it possible to study the then ecosystem. It was populated by woolly mammoths, wild horses and wolvesScientists working in Canada, Sweden, Denmark and the United States discovered DNA from megafauna and glacial age flora in a rather unexpected location.
Paleontology develops all kinds of methods to try to explain how the most remote past was and in a new study has resorted to fossilized stools of squirrels up to 700,000 years old that contain prehistoric DNA to reveal abundant details about the evolutionary history of the Arctic.
The Toronto Star
meadowlakeNOWAncient squirrel feces offer ‘time capsule’ of environment thousands of years ago
A researcher in British Columbia recently discovered that ancient squirrel scat can still smell just as fresh today as it did some 700,000 years ago.
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