DNA traces have been discovered in the fossilized remains of a sea turtle dating back 6 million years ago.
Researchers say sea turtles are closely related to olive ridley turtles and modern-day turtles, marking one of the few times genetic material has been identified in ancient vertebrate fossils live like that, researchers said THURSDAY.
Some bone cells, called osteocytes, are perfectly preserved in fossils discovered along the Caribbean coast of Panama in 2015, researchers say.
The fossil is only partial, with a relatively complete shell – the turtle’s shell – but not the rest of the skeleton. They said the turtle could have been about 30cm long when alive. In some bone cells, the cell nucleus was preserved and reacted with a chemical solution, allowing researchers to recognize the presence of DNA remnants, said paleontologist Edwin Cadena, lead author. , a molecule that carries genetic information necessary for the development and functioning of an organism. . of the study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Cadena, from the Universidad del Rosario in Bogota and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, added: “I want to emphasize that we did not extract DNA, we were only able to recognize the presence of traces of DNA in the seeds core”.
View shows a turtle fossil, in Bogota, Colombia, in this photo taken in 2022.
DNA is quite susceptible to damage, although under the right conditions it has been preserved in some ancient sites.
Last year, researchers reported the discovery of DNA from animals, plants and bacteria dating to about 2 million years ago in sediments in the northernmost region of Greenland.
Cadena said the only vertebrate fossils older than the newly described turtle found with similar DNA traces belong to two dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus, which lived about 66 million years ago, and Brachylophosaurus, which lived about 78 million years ago. DNA traces have also been reported in insects dating back tens of millions of years, Cadena said.
The turtle belongs to the same genus – Lepidochelys – as two of the world’s seven living sea turtle species – the Kemp’s ridley, the world’s smallest sea turtle, and the olive ridley, Cadena said.