Ancient tooth found near Old Crow, Yukon

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Scientists have discovered that a tooth found near Old Crow, Yukon, in 2018 belonged to the oldest known woolly mammoth in North America.

The discovery challenges the popular belief that mammoths crossed into North America from Siberia in the last 100,000 years, said Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University and one of the scientists behind the research. 

"We have had results in previous research suggesting that mammoths were in North America quite a long time ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, but those specimens have never been identified," Dalén said.

"So finding this really confirms our earlier theory."