When the remains of the last member of an extinct species were hard to find, Willerslev and a team of international research scientists decided to carry out an expedition to Central Alaska to solve the riddle of "The last surviving mammoths" using ancient-DNA tests from permafrost soil.

Surprisingly, the scientists found that the later samples with mammoth DNA could be dated back to between 10,500 and 7,500 years ago, and are therefore between 2,600 and 5,600 years after

the supposed extinction of the mammoths from mainland Alaska. Thus, the scientists found proof that mammoths had walked the earth several thousand years longer than previously believed; presumably by lesser herds of these animals threatened with extinction, surviving in small, isolated enclaves, where living conditions were intact.
The findings breathe new life into the debate about why prehistoric animals, such as sabre-toothed tigers, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and mammoths apparently suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.

"Our findings show that the mammoth and the horse existed side by side with the first human immigrants in America for certainly 3,500 years and were therefore not wiped out by human beings or natural disasters within a few hundred years, as common theories otherwise argue. The technique behind ancient-DNA analysis has the potential to greatly contribute to the debate about the extermination of prehistoric species, but can also be used to gather knowledge of contemporary animal species which are so shy that they are hard to detect. Not to mention the forensic possibilities opened up by the technique," Eske Willerslev points out.

(From Phys.Org)