Researchers have now deciphered the genetic code for a wild horse that lived about 70,000 years ago. This makes it the oldest creature to have its DNA coded by scientists.

The horse lived 700,000 years ago in the Canadian Yukon. The DNA is recovered from frozen fossils and older than any previous DNA used.

Scientists thought it was completely impossible to recover useful amounts of DNA from fossils as old as the horse.

The fossilized horse DNA shatters the current record. The previous oldest genome is from 110,000 years ago. That genome was sequenced from polar bear DNA.

The DNA was extracted from a piece of a fossilized horse leg bone found in the Yukon nine years ago.

The primitive horse lived during a period where woolly mammoths, giant saber-toothed cats, and other strange creatures shared turf with human ancestors.

Normal DNA degrades soon after death. However, in this case, the horse bones were in permafrost, causing the DNA to degrade less.

The team pieced together fragments of DNA recovered from the bone. They found that the horse was probably about the size of a modern Icelandic or Arabian horse. It was likely less muscular and may have been slower. Little else is known about what the horse looked like from the remains or DNA alone.

The horse DNA sequenced ''opens great perspectives as to the level of details we can reconstruct of our origins and the evolutionary history of every animal on the planet'', said study leader Ludovic Orlando of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark to press.