Woolly Mammoth Closer to Asian Elephants

TOKYO (AP) _ Japanese scientists said Friday that DNA tests have shown that the prehistoric woolly mammoth is more closely related to Asian elephants than to their African counterparts, settling a long-running debate over the lineage of the giant animals that went extinct 10,000 years ago.

Nagoya University professor Tomoo Ozawa and his team examined muscle tissue DNA taken from a woolly mammoth excavated in Siberia and determined that the animal and Asiatic elephants branched off from the same ancestor 4.8 million years ago. African elephants diverged from the family tree earlier on, about 7.3 million years ago, the group said.

Ozawa's group analyzed DNA taken from the mammoth and compared it with that of Asiatic and African elephants. Experts' views had been divided over which group of elephants the woolly mammoth was more closely related to.

''We could successfully read the DNA thanks to the good condition of the mammoth tissue samples,'' Ozawa told a televised news conference. ''As researchers we are so happy that our findings can now settle the debate over the mammoth relatives that had lasted more than 30 years.''

The almost perfectly preserved head of a 10,000-year-old Siberian woolly mammoth _ excavated from the Siberian tundra last June _ is currently on display at the Aichi Expo 2005 in central Japan.

Ozawa's group is to make a public presentation of its findings at a symposium on Saturday