The oldest blood ever found!
Scientists successfully retrieved liquid blood from the remarkably well-preserved mummified body of a 42,000-year-old extinct baby horse found in Siberia. It is believed to be the oldest blood ever found – and raises optimism about the possibility of cloning back to life the long-gone Lenskaya species of prehistoric horse that roamed Yakutia, the coldest region in Russia, back in the Upper Paleolithic (Late Stone Age).
A team of Russian scientists are already trying to clone the extinct species of horse, using the remains of a foal that has been buried 30m-deep in the Siberian permafrost for 42,000 years.
The foal, which dates back to the Pleistocene epoch and is thought to belong to the Lenskaya horse species, was discovered last year by locals in the Verkhoyansk region.
The tiny foal was taken to the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, Russia, to be researched. According to the director of the museum, Semyon Grigoriev, the museum has the biggest collection of ice age animals in the world, including a mammoth, an elk and a wolf, but this newly discovered foal is the best preserved of them all.
The foal’s blood has remained liquid below the permafrost for 42,000 years.