700,000-year-old fossil discovered in Yukon permafrost
yields genome world record.
When University of Alberta researcher Duane Froese found an
unusually large horse fossil in the Yukon permafrost, he knew it was important.
Now, in a new study published in the journal Nature, this fossil is rewriting
the story of equine evolution as the ancient horse has its genome sequenced.
Froese, a researcher in the Department of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change
at the U of A, had spent years visiting Yukon placer gold mining exposures to
understand the permafrost and the ice age environments that supported megafauna
including mammoths, horses and bison.