Researchers at Stockholm University have succeeded, for the first time ever, in isolating and sequencing RNA molecules from woolly mammoths that lived during the Ice Age. The team analyzed RNA that had been preserved for almost 40 years in mammoth tissue preserved in the Siberian permafrost – and these are the oldest RNA sequences ever identified. According to the study, published in the journal Cell, the results show that RNA, like DNA and proteins, can remain intact for much longer than previously thought. Photo: Emilio Marmol-Sanchez, one of the authors of the article.