Ancient fossil DNA discovered in Antarctica

Researchers from Germany and Australia have discovered 1-million-year-old marine DNA in deep-sea sediments of the Scotia Sea, north of the Antarctic continent – according to the work published in the Nature journal, TASS reports

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“Our finding is so far the oldest fossil DNA that has been extracted from underwater sediments. Among its fragments, there are also segments of the genome of diatoms that play an important role in food chains in marine ecosystems,” said Linda Armbrecht, a researcher at the University of Tasmania (Australia).