Technologies

2 Million-Year-Old DNA, the Oldest Ever Recovered, Opens Window to the Past

The prehistoric forest of northern Greenland was home to mastodons, reindeer, hares and an abundance of plant life.

As early as 2006, Eske Willerslev and members of his lab ventured into northern Greenland with a drill, extracting cores of sediment from the Kap København Formation. They were hunting for environmental DNA, or eDNA, in their cores — puzzle pieces that could help paint a picture of the plants and animals present in the region 2 million years ago.

But for the longest time, they came up empty-handed. «Every time we had improvements in terms of DNA extraction or sequencing technology, we’d revisit these samples,» Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Cambridge, said in a press briefing on Tuesday.

No matter what, the researchers failed to get what they were looking for. The run of bad luck saw members of the lab turn to the occult for an explanation; they named their troubles «the curse of the Kap København Formation.»

But with steady improvements in DNA extraction and sequencing technologies, the curse was finally broken.

On Wednesday, the team published the results of their 16-year pursuit of ancient DNA in the journal Nature. They were able to sequence eDNA from 41 sediment samples, collected in 2006, 2012 and 2016 from the Kap København Formation and undisturbed by humans for 2 million years. Their analyses revealed that a lush forest replete with reindeer, hares, mastodons and a wide variety of flora once stood in what is now a dull, gray polar desert.

Willerslev, a pioneering geneticist who has previously recovered eDNA from ice cores and shown it could survive in glaciers, noted that the «breakthrough» relied on expertise, advances in genetic sequencing techniques and bioinformatics.

History in the soil

DNA, which carries the instructions for life, is not a particularly sturdy molecule. The bonds that hold it together are weak and, over time, they break down.

This is why, even though we have an abundance of dinosaur fossils, we don’t have any dinosaur DNA. The beasts died out 66 million years ago, and the DNA would simply not survive that long.

When DNA degrades, the once-long strands of information break apart into smaller and smaller pieces. It becomes almost impossible to piece these fragments back together in the right configuration, especially if they are mixed in with a lot of other DNA from the environment.

Think of DNA like a book. Let’s say Alice in Wonderland. If you have the whole book, you can understand the story. But if you’re missing a few pages, you might not understand where the White Rabbit came from or why Alice ended up at a tea party with the Mad Hatter. If you’re missing lots of pages, you probably can’t even tell what the story was to begin with. Alice? Who’s that? And why is she 10 feet tall?

That’s the problem working with ancient DNA. You might be able to retrieve small fragments of DNA but it is generally too fragmented to be able to tell where it came from — and certainly too fragmented to understand where it came from.

But under certain circumstances, DNA fragments can survive deep time.

«The ‘survival time’ of DNA in the environment is incredibly variable and strongly dependent on the environment itself,» notes Michael Knapp, an ecologist and geneticist at Otago University in New Zealand.

Previously, the oldest DNA ever recovered came from mammoth fossils found in the Siberian permafrost. In a Nature paper in 2021, researchers showed that DNA from the mammoth teeth was, potentially, about 1.6 million years old. The DNA recovered was broken up into small fragments but they weren’t degraded so much they couldn’t be pieced back together. The cold temperature of the permafrost certainly helped with this.

It’s a similar story in the new study.

Willerslev and his collaborators postulate that the long survival time of the DNA in their sediment cores was possible for two reasons. The first is the constant cold temperature of the polar desert. The second is the way the DNA is bound to minerals in the cores, preventing degradation over longer time scales. The idea is that these mineral surfaces prevent enzymes from breaking down the DNA.

Karina Sand, a geochemist at the University of Copenhagen and co-author on the paper, explained that one of the technological leaps that enabled this feat was extracting DNA from clay and quartz minerals. The latter provided an abundance of DNA, but the former was harder to extract good DNA from. Fortunately, that leaves the door open for even older DNA extraction.

«If we can get better at extracting the DNA from the clay minerals, then we think we can go further back in time with DNA,» she said.

The research team was able to extract DNA from the sediment cores and begin to read the surviving fragments. These fragments were then compared to a database of genomes (complete DNA sequences) of modern plants and animals, looking for DNA matches. Over time, they were able to fill the blank pages of history, demonstrating the thriving ecosystem of ancient Greenland.

The ancient forest of Greenland

Two million years ago, Greenland was a different place.

«The Kap København ecosystem, which has no present-day equivalent, existed at considerably higher temperatures than we have today,» noted Mikkel Pederson, a geneticist at the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, in a press release.

In northern Greenland, average temperatures during this time were likely more than 11 degrees Celsius (around 20 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than they are today. Previous studies at Kap København have shown evidence it was home to a boreal forest, but the eDNA extracted and analyzed in the new study provides a complete reimagining of the area, adding in megafauna and a wide variety of plant life.

The headline mammal DNA found in the cores is undoubtedly the mastodon — which is having a bit of a moment thanks to social media. Some of the eDNA found matched to the Elephantidae family, which includes elephants, mammoths and mastodons. It seems mastodons may have roamed Greenland 2 million years ago, though the researchers note the evidence isn’t extremely strong and is based on relatively weak DNA matches.

The team also found DNA related to reindeer, hares and rabbits, and the subfamily of animals that includes lemmings, voles and muskrats. Notably absent, however, is DNA from carnivores. The researchers suggest this is because of their comparably small biomass in relation to the herbivores. «It’s basically a numbers game,» Willerslev said.

One of the more intriguing DNA finds is of the Atlantic horseshoe crab. The species is no longer found at such northern latitudes, and the authors suggest this may mean Kap København experienced warmer sea surface temperatures 2 million years ago. Previous research has suggested the sea surface was warmer at higher latitudes, and the discovery of horseshoe crab DNA lends further support to this hypothesis.

Warmer temperatures are key. Multiple authors on the paper have reiterated the importance of understanding an ecosystem like this, given the effects of global warming. Two million years ago, the climate was changing and the eDNA shows that Arctic species were living with species that loved much warmer climes. This helps scientists to get an understanding of how nature was adapting to those changes and, within the DNA signatures, there may be clues to ways we could help modern-day fauna and flora survive extreme climatic swings.

One of the significant limitations of studying eDNA is that scientists have to postulate about the kinds of species that were living at the time. Knapp notes closely related ancient species might give you a DNA match but this is «somewhat inaccurate» — it provides an approximation of what existed. We may only be able to assign the DNA at a family or order level, so we can’t know exactly what roamed the boreal forest of Greenland 2 million years ago.

Even so, the recovery of DNA this old opens a new window to the prehistoric Earth, a pathway for scientists and researchers to probe the ecosystems that existed long before humans were around. The team will head to northern Canada to extract cores next year and hope to go even further back in time.

The extraction method may even lend itself to finding DNA in more humid climates across the world, like in Africa and Australia.

«If we can begin to explore ancient DNA in clay grains from Africa, we may be able to gather ground-breaking information about the origin of many different species —perhaps even new knowledge about the first humans and their ancestors,» Willerslev said in a statement.

«The possibilities are endless.»

Technologies

Facing Billions in DMA Fines, Apple Lets EU iPhone Users Install Apps Outside the App Store

A last-minute rule change lets European iPhone owners download apps from rival stores and developer websites, while introducing new fees that Apple hopes will satisfy regulators in Brussels.

In a scramble to sidestep penalties that could soar into the billions, and with Brussels regulators watching closely, Apple has agreed to let Europeans download iPhone apps from outside its own App Store.

With just hours left before an EU compliance deadline, the company said residents of the 27-nation bloc will soon be able to grab apps from rival marketplaces or straight off a developer’s website. The change rolls out later this year with iOS 18.6 and iPadOS 18.6, and also lets users set a different browser engine and choose a third-party wallet at checkout.

For everyday EU iPhone owners, that means the download button could pop up in more places than just Apple’s storefront. After you select the new setting, iOS shows a one-time permission sheet confirming you’re leaving Apple’s marketplace. The app then passes a quick notarization scan meant to weed out malware. Apple notes that off-store downloads work only inside the EU, and disappear if you stay outside the bloc for more than 30 days.

Cost to developers

Developers do gain fresh distribution freedom, but there’s a price tag. A new two-tier Store Services fee asks for 5% of outside sales in exchange for basic services like app reviews and support in what’s called Tier 1, or 13% for the full bundle of perks, including automatic updates and App Store promotions in Tier 2.

Apple will take a 5% «Core Technology Commission» on any purchase made outside its own payment system. That new cut will phase out the current €0.50-per-download fee and become the sole charge across the EU when a unified pricing model arrives on Jan. 1, 2026.

Apple insists «more than 99%» of devs will pay the same or less under the revamped math.

Why now?

In April, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million ($585 million) for blocking developers from steering users to cheaper payment options, and warned that daily penalties of up to 5% of global revenue could follow if it failed to comply.

Throughout the back-and-forth, Apple has accused the commission of «moving the goalposts» on what counts as compliance, with a spokesperson saying the company has invested «hundreds of thousands of hours» to meet the EU’s evolving demands.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney blasted the 5% tier as a «malicious compliance scheme» that «makes a mockery of fair competition.»

If regulators decide Apple still hasn’t gone far enough, the iPhone maker could face steeper sanctions, or even be forced to separate its App Store business.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 27, #1469

Here are hints — and the answer — for today’s Wordle No. 1,469 for June 27. Some players need a new starter word now.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, but somehow, it has a starting letter I never seem to guess. Some posters on Reddit say it was one of their starter words, so now they’re in the market for a new way to begin the game. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with P.

Wordle hint No. 4: Placement

The two vowels are next to each other.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to something that is not decorated and is simple.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is PLAIN.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 26, No. 1468 was OFFER.

Recent Wordle answers

June 22, No. 1464: THRUM

June 23, No. 1465: ODDLY

June 24, No. 1466: ELITE

June 25, No. 1467: COMFY

Will Wordle run out of words?

When Wordle began, creator Josh Wardle used a list of five-letter words he’d shared with his partner, picking only the words they recognized. While that’s more than 2,000 words, more than half of them have already been used.

Wordle editor Tracy Bennett admitted that the game will eventually have to come to grips with the fact that the word list is not eternal.

«One possibility is that we could recycle old words at some point, like when we get close to the end,» Bennett told a Wordle player on TikTok.

She also said the editors might throw all the words back in and reuse them, or allow plurals, or past tense, something that’s not done now.

Technologies

Why Smart Travelers Are Switching to eSIMs This Summer

Save 20% on Nomad eSIMs and use your phone all you want around the world without spending a fortune on roaming fees and data add-ons.

Higher prices are looming for just about everything, but they’re not stopping people from planning more summer travel than ever.

Deloitte’s 2025 summer travel survey found that despite the gloomy economy, more Americans will travel this year than they did last year. And young people are especially ready for some self-care elsewhere: a survey by Allianz found that a whopping 70% of Americans under 35 are planning to take a vacation this summer.

If you’re one of the many people thirsty for a summer getaway, there’s a good chance you’re also looking to cut costs where you can. Maybe you’re opting for a cheaper mid-week flight rather than heading out on Friday, or heading somewhere off the beaten path instead of a tourist-packed metropolis.

Another smart way to trim your travel budget is to use an eSIM. You don’t have to pay pricey roaming or add-on data fees to look up local spots, post pics and check your email while you’re out of the country. Nomad eSIM, one of the most affordable options, gives you the data to do all that and more from over 200 countries. And right now you can get 20% off your first Nomad data plan with the code NOMCNET20.

What is an eSIM?

If you’ve ever upgraded your phone or switched carriers, you’re likely familiar with what a SIM card is: It’s that tiny chip in your phone that essentially connects it to your mobile carrier.

A digital eSIM is different in that it’s downloaded from the web directly into your phone. You can activate it using an app and switch carriers without the fuss of having to swap out your physical SIM card.

An eSIM can be a smart choice for travelers who want to use their phone while abroad. Because eSIMs are data-based, you’ll be able to send emails, browse the web, scroll your socials, stream videos and make data-based voice and video calls — all without having to pay the expensive roaming and data fees of your regular US-based carrier.

How a Nomad eSIM helps you save on international data

Nomad eSIM is different from the other eSIMs in that it offers an affordable plan lineup for every type of trip. Whether you’re going to Costa Rica for a week-long retreat or backpacking around Europe all summer, you can pick a plan that works for your specific needs — and budget.

If you’re visiting one destination, Nomad has you covered with daily, weekly and monthly data plans ranging from 1GB to more than 20GB with coverage in over 200 countries. Travelers can also choose daily unlimited plans for a week, and there are local plans for single-country trips or regional plans for multi-destination travel. Current prices on plans include hotspots like Thailand ($0.18/GB) and Iceland ($1/GB).

Get data plans tailored to your travel needs — and budget

If you’re exploring more than one country, the Nomad Global plan has weekly and monthly plans ranging from 1GB to 5GB and coverage in up to 112 countries. While global in reach, Nomad has intentionally focused coverage on the most popular travel destinations, helping to keep global plan costs more affordable. A 1GB, one-week Global plan starts at just $12, ideal for the occasional check-ins with loved ones and social media posts. Or you can opt for a 3GB or a 5GB Global plan starting at $26 or $36 respectively, and the data is good for one month.

eSIMs are great for frequent flyers and digital nomads, too

For backpackers, students abroad and digital nomads, the Nomad Global-EX plan offers handy six-month and year-long options that are good in up to 82 countries.

The highly affordable Global-EX offers a 10GB, six-month plan starting at just $30 and a 20GB, one-year plan starting at $50, plus the option to expand your data limit to 30GB or 50GB as needed. This plan eliminates the hassle of having to reactivate your eSIM for each trip, and it’s more affordable than other eSIM brands that offer similar data allowances for shorter durations.

And for those who prefer unlimited data, Nomad has recently expanded its offerings with 21 new unlimited plans. Perfect for travelers who don’t want to worry about running out of data or topping up, these plans start as low as $11 USD for 3 days of unlimited usage.

eSIMs provide instant, hassle-free connectivity

No matter which plan you choose, the Nomad eSIM is a snap to use. Simply download the app and activate the eSIM on your unlocked iOS or Android eSIM-compatible phone so you can get online the minute you land. There’s no physical SIM card, no contracts and no hassle.

Lock in a new Nomad plan today and score 20% off with the discount code NOMCNET20.