"Woolly mammoths, ice-age pachyderms that died out thousands of years ago, probably came in blond and red as well as the black and gray favored in museum reconstructions. According to a paper to appear in today’s issue of Science, a team of European scientists isolated a gene affecting hair coloration from a 43,000-year-old mammoth bone found in Russia. The gene, which appears in other mammals, can produce red or yellow hair.
The Science paper does not discuss whether the gene conferred any behavioral traits on blond mammoths."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
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