Scientists say newly discovered woolly mammoth blood boosts cloning prospects

A researcher studies a mammoth carcass found on an island in the Arctic Ocean. (Northeastern Federal Universit …A team of scientists says blood recovered from the preserved carcass of a woolly mammoth is reviving hopes that the extinct creature could one day be cloned back into existence.

"When we broke the ice beneath her stomach, the blood flowed out from there. It was very dark," said Semyon Grigoryev, a Russian scientist who led the expedition that found the mammoth, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

And Grigoryev says the well-preserved state of the mammoth offers new potential for cloning the creature, either directly through its DNA or in conjunction with another closely related mammal, such as an elephant.

"This find gives us a really good chance of finding live cells, which can help us implement this project to clone a mammoth," he said.

In 2012, North-Eastern Federal University, where Grigoryev works as a professor, enlisted the aid of controversial Sooam Biotech Research Foundation researcher Hwang Woo-Suk. In 2005, Woo-Suk made history by creating the world’s first cloned dog, but much of his work was later called into question or discredited.

The website phys.org reports that a Russian expedition discovered the mammoth carcass while conducting research in April on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. Its body is said to have been preserved for about 10,000 to 15,000 years, roughly the time the mammoth is believed to have gone extinct.

Interestingly, the scientists discovered only the lower half of the mammoth’s body. They believe it was submerged in water at the time of its death. After the water eventually froze, they believe that predators consumed the top half of the mammoth carcass.

In a gruesome but scientifically promising detail, Grigoryev claims that blood seeped from the carcass when his team made an incision in its body.

"This is the most astonishing case in my entire life. How was it possible for it to remain in liquid form? And the muscle tissue is also red, the color of fresh meat," Grigoryev said.

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Heart of Lionheart smell sweet for the sky, scientists find

VERSAILLES, France (Reuters)-the heart of Lion heart was embalmed with daisy, Myrtle, mint and incense, scented so Santa kept hoping to accelerate King Richard of England's ascent into heaven.

French scientists have analyzed the body, preserved at the Cathedral of Rouen after the death of Richard I, known as Lionheart; they found was wrapped in linen, treated with mercury, herbs and reverence and pollen record holding confirmation of his death from a war wound in the spring of 1199, in Central France.

What Philippe Charlier, who published his Thursday, did not find the dirty dust is all that remains of the heart was no traces of toxin-bolt dulling tales that the Crusader king was struck by a poisoned crossbow. Medieval dirt and an infected wound probably caused her death, at the age of 41 years.

For English, fresh from rediscovering the ruins of 15th century descendant of Lionheart, namesake and Shakespearean villain Richard III under a municipal parking, the team results of Charlier may revive memories of a monarch who lives in popular culture as the away, but "good King Richard" in the tales of Robin Hood.

For the French, which Richard fought when he died, his reputation as a ruthless Warrior, against Muslims in the Holy Land, but also in Europe, can explain the care to preserve the heart of the King so expensively bound in medieval mind with embalming of Jesus after the crucifixion.

"He was rather criticized during the crusade when he was particularly cruel," Charlier, a youth television celebrity in France, told a press conference at Versailles.

"People started to talk about when he died, so very special attention was to be given to his body and especially his heart, with herbs and spices that were not chosen by accident.

"We know from historical records that those herbs and spices have been used to make time Richard the Lionheart would spend in Purgatory as brief and give him some kind of odor of sanctity.

"So this study is almost a scientific study of an artificial odor of sanctity, a man," added Charlier, dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the cemeteries" by French media for his high-profile analysis of relics and royal remains the last few years.

WITHOUT DOUBT

Unlike some of these discoveries, notably genetic analysis of bones found belong to Richard III or Charlier a analysis that concluded was that of Henri IV, great King of Renaissance France, no research was conducted in Rouen to determine if his heart was in fact that of Richard I.

The organ was first rediscovered during the work at the Cathedral in the 19th century, in a lead coffin dated to the 12th or 13th century bearing the inscription in Latin: "--jacet hic cor ricardi regis anglorum"-here is the heart of Richard King of England. Its provenance was not in doubt, Charlier said, noting a practice prevalent at the time of the actual division remains for burial in different sites.

Among his earlier works, Charlier, 35, has found that the relics of Joan of arc, in fact, came from an Egyptian Mummy and verified dried blood on a handkerchief was guillotined Louis XVI from DNA testing to link it to other royal remains.

In their book "scientific reports", University Hospital Charlier Raymond Poincaré and his team wrote that they found traces of linen, Crape Myrtle, Daisy, mint, incense, creosote, mercury and possibly.

Had no clearly identifiable human tissue but said Embalmers themselves were not necessarily guilt-rot may have been due to decay in the lead and always wet.

If they were successful in accelerating the process by which Richard entered the paradise is a matter of pure speculation.

Charlier, whose Twitter account describes his "patients" as "(soon), ... Henri IV, Richard the Lionheart, Louis XVI etc, "noted in the book that had ruled a Bishop from the 13th century:" Richard the Lionheart spent 33 years in Purgatory as Expiation for his sins and ascended into heaven just in March 1232. "

(Additional reporting by Vicky Buffery in Paris and Reuters Television at Versailles; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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