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Thursday, July 06, 2006
By TOM KRISHER, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Mammoths may have come in various hair colors, perhaps even red and blond, new research indicates.
Researchers led by Holger Roempler of the University of Leipzig in Germany were able to extract DNA from a 43,000-year-old mammoth bone from Siberia.
They report in Friday's issue of the journal Science said that the mammoth DNA included the gene Mc1r. That gene codes for a protein that affects hair color in humans and other mammals. Reduced activity of that gene produces red hair in humans and cows and yellow hair in mice, horses and dogs, for example.
Thus it is possible, the researchers concluded, that mammoths existed with a variety of hair colors.
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