Ever since childhood we have pictured mammoths as wooly dark presences, lumbering through eternities of driving snow with sullen intent, but once again the cherished iconography of our youth must give way to new research, which indicates, of all things, that mammoths may have stumbled along in a variety of hair colors – not only the traditionally imagined dark brown/black but also blonde and even red.
How has this mind-reeling revelation come to reorient our time-honored mental picture?
Researchers at the University of Leipzig in Germany were somehow able to extricate DNA from a 43,000-year-old mammoth bone from Siberia, and therein lies the tale.
They report in the usual journal Science that the mammoth double helix included the gene Mc1r, which is the genetic code for a protein that helps determine hair color in humans and other mammals.
Apparently, lower activity of the gene produces, for example, yeller hair in mice, horses, and dogs and red hair in humans and cows.
They did not address the question of whether blonde mammoths had more fun.
Tom Attea, humorist and creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway and has written comedy for TV. Critics have called his writing ""delightfully funny" and "witty" with "good, genuine laughs." |
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