Soil Samples in Yukon Revels How Long Mammoths and Wild Horses Survived

Simple spoonfuls of dirt extracted from Canada's permafrost provide rich new information and rewrite old views about the extinction dynamics, dates, and survival of megafaunas like mammoths, horses, and other long-lost living forms in the Yukon.

"While mammoths are extinct, horses are not," says co-author Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History. "The horse that roamed the Yukon 5,000 years ago is genetically connected to the horse species we have today, Equus caballus, making it a native North American animal that ought to be classified as such."

Scientists also emphasize collecting and archiving additional permafrost samples, which are at risk of disappearing forever as the Arctic warms.

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