The DNA of many mammoths is relatively well preserved because they died in permafrostALAMY

It has been at least 10,000 years since a human saw a mammoth die of natural causes on the Arctic tundra. But now we have a good idea how old such a mammoth would have been: 60.

Thanks to a new genetic tool we also know that not only would that have made the mammoth a fair bit older than most Homo sapiens lived to at the time, it would also have been older than our long extinct evolutionary cousins — the Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The finding comes after a project mapped the lifespan of hundreds of animals to their genetics. One of the markers, or possibly causes, of ageing is a process called DNA methylation, whereby chemical changes on DNA can “dial up” or…