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Feeling Happy
Blonde wooly mammoths?
I was tickled by this study. We were just talking about the various colors that the dinosaurs could have been with Shelby--reptiles come in a dazzling array of colors, and there is not reason to think that the dinosaurs were all a drab gray. Now it seems that Wooly Mammoths came in at least three colors!
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wow! Talk about a blond bombshell.
It turns out 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.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
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Ok what are you stressing about? Not too many personal entries! Hmmm?
Traci -
well now i cna officially make blone wooly mamoth jokes I been dying to do that!!!!!!!!!
7/7/06 12:43 PM