Man, your bad breath is MAMMOTH!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Over a million years ago, woolly mammoths roamed the earth. They’re extinct now, and while fossils preserve the shape and size, most DNA is lost. Not all of it, though…
Enter Benjamin Guinet and team from the Center for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University.
On one mammoth tooth, they found DNA from over three hundred microbes. They discovered some that actually lived in the mammoth’s mouth while it was still alive. That’s a scientific first!
Studying these pre-death microbes could shed light on the biology of both extinct species and past ecosystems.
But it’s too late to do anything about a MAMMOTH TOOTHACHE! Poor Snuffleupagus.
Reference: Guinet, B., Oskolkov N., Moreland K., Dehasque M., Camilo J., Angerbjorn A., Luis Arsuaga J., Danilov G., Kanellidou F., Kitchener A. C., Muller H., Plonikov V., Protopopov A., Tikhonov A., Termes L., Zazula G., Mortensen P., Grigorieva L., Richards M., Shapiro B., Lister A. M., Vartanyan S., Diez-del-Molino D., Gotherstrom A., Pecnerova P., Nikolskiy P., Dalen L., Valk T. Ancient host-associated microbes obtained from mammoth remains: Cell (2025). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.08.003