Historical accounts show the upokororo was once common in rivers across the country. It’s now officially extinct, but is there a chance survivors could still be found in remote waterways?
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Articles on Ancient DNA
Displaying 21 - 40 of 48 articles
Only half of New Zealand’s roughly 4,000 mollusc species have been seen alive. Now geneticists can decode DNA from shells in museum collections to trace the life histories of extinct or rare species.
DNA from ancient eastern moa bones is unlocking the secrets of their survival during the last ice age, and providing lessons for today’s threatened species.
Biologists have used ancient DNA, preserved in fossil bones for millennia, to study the evolution of large species, but now they can employ it to study small animals like lizards and frogs.
A new study doubles the age of ancient DNA in sub-Saharan Africa, revealing how people moved, mingled and had children together over the last 50,000 years.
Studying ancient DNA in Africa is valuable for understanding human evolution, population migrations, and human history locally, regionally and globally.
The first ancient human DNA from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi — and the wider Wallacea islands group — sheds light on the early human history of the region.
By studying the DNA of people who lived in East Asia thousands of years ago, scientists are starting to untangle how the region was populated.
For decades, the extinction of passenger pigeons has been explained by two theories of human impact. New research shows one of these theories is now more compelling than the other.
Archaeologists have long argued over when and how people first domesticated horses. A decade ago, new techniques appeared to have provided answers – but further discoveries change the story again.
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
Researchers used advanced chemical analyses to study breastfeeding in some of the world’s first farming communities.
Understanding why the great auk went extinct could help protect species still living today.
It’s not always easy to work out where Aboriginal remains came from, but science can help.
People caught and died from plague long before it caused major epidemics like the Black Death in the middle ages. Could what scientists call cultural resistance be what kept the disease under control?
Pastoralism is a central part of many Africans’ identity. But how and when did this way of life get started on the continent? Ancient DNA can reveal how herding populations spread.
DNA found in chewing gum from 10,000 years ago is helping scientists learn about prehistoric humans.
Ancient DNA allows scientists to learn directly from the remains of people from the past. As this new field takes off, researchers are figuring out how to ethically work with ancient samples and each other.
Let’s worry about the future of Brexit, not its prehistory.
Museums around the world hold remains of Aboriginal people that were often taken without permission and in the absence of accurate records. New DNA methods may help return these items to country.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rice University
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Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago
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Assistant Curator of Human Evolution., University of Alberta
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Mathematics Lecturer and Ancient DNA Researcher, University of Adelaide
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Research scientist, Griffith University
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Professor in Molecular Archaeology, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University
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Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
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Associate Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University
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Associate Professor of Population and Statistical Genetics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Postdoctoral Researcher, Swansea University
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DPhil Student, University of Oxford
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Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Otago
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PhD Student, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah
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Senior Lecturer (Archaeology), University of Glasgow
