LOS ANGELES, Dec. 19 (Xinhuanet)– An international research team reported on Monday that it has mapped part of the genome of the woolly mammoth, a huge relative of today’s elephant extinct for about 10,000 years.

Using a combination of novel techniques, the researchers have sequenced a chunk of ancient DNA belonging to remains of a woolly mammoth and “fellow travelers,” including a sample of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and plants that lived at the same time as the mammoth.

The remains of the mammoth, which lived in Siberia about 28,000 years ago, were well preserved in the permafrost, the researchers from Canada and the United States said in the Dec. 22 online edition of the journal Science.