700,000-Year-Old Horse Becomes Oldest Creature With Sequenced Genome - ScienceNOW

700,000-Year-Old Horse Becomes Oldest Creature With Sequenced Genome

by Gisela Telis on 26 June 2013, 2:45 PM 

Scientists have sequenced the oldest genome to date—and shaken up the horse family tree in the process. Ancient DNA derived from a horse fossil that's between 560,000 and 780,000 years old suggests that all living equids—members of the family that includes horses, donkeys, and zebras—shared a common ancestor that lived at least 4 million years ago, approximately 2 million years earlier than most previous estimates. The discovery offers new insights into equine evolution and raises the prospect of recovering and exploring older DNA than previously thought possible.

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