DNA Shocker: some wooly mammoths were blond

DNA analysis has proven all our childhood museum visits viewing mammoths sporting only dark coats were wrong.

By examining DNA extracted from a mammoth bone frozen in Siberian permafrost and comparing it with sequences from other mammoth remains, researchers have concluded that the wooly creatures probably carried two versions of Mc1r, a gene whose protein product helps determine hair color in several mammals, including humans, mice, horses and dogs...

If the mammoth gene works the same way that it does for humans and other mammals, the lighter animals might have had yellow or reddish hair, while the dark ones might have been black or brown.