The effects of the melting polar ice caps may one day be felt well beyond the poles, though. As the polar ice caps shrink, sea levels begin to rise, creating serious problems for coastal areas around the globe. Fortunately, we can do our part to slow down and prevent the environmental changes causing the polar ice caps to melt.
Paabo and colleagues used a new method for sequencing ancient, degraded genetic material to put together the 400,000-year-old specimen's mitochondrial genome. It is the oldest DNA ever found outside permafrost conditions -- in other words, it was not permanently frozen.
Mar 04, 2015 at 12:58 PM ET. This 2.8 million-year-old jawbone may be the oldest human fossil in existence, according to two papers published simultaneously in Science. Researchers now suspect that Homo (the genus that includes modern humans) dates back at least 400,000 years earlier than previously thought.