In the field of ancient DNA, scientists keep doing the impossible. The very idea of reading genes from organisms that died thousands of years ago once seemed absurd. Then it became fairly commonplace. Still, some kinds of old DNA seemed off limits. The only place scientists could hope to find it was cold places where the molecule had a chance of surviving for millennia. Finding ancient DNA in a place like Africa seemed a fool’s errand.
Scientists are crashing through that barrier, too. A place like Africa may not be as cold as Alaska. But it does include sites–high-altitude caves, for example–where some DNA can survive. And new, sensitive tests can detect DNA in samples that would have seemed gene-free a few years ago.
This week in the New York Times, I wrote about a new study on 16 samples of ancient DNA from human remains, ranging in age up to 8,000 years old. The new results complement archaeological research, showing how populations have migrated across Africa, sometimes overrunning each other, sometimes merging together. Check it out.
October 11, Stony Brook University, New York: Provost’s Lecture. Science Reporting in the Age of Fake News.
October 20: New York: Imagine Science Film Festival Closing Night. Details.
October 28 & 29, San Francisco. World Conference of Science Journalists. I’ll be speaking at two sessions. Details.
November 1, New York. “What Is Life?” Night 2: How did life start?
November 8, University of Oxford. Twelfth Annual Baruch Blumberg Lecture
December 6, New York. “What Is Life?” Night 3: Is life inevitable?
December 20, New York. “What Is Life?” Night 4: What did the first life look like?
January 3-7, 2018 San Francisco: Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting, Plenary Lecture
February 15, 2018, Rochester, NY: Neilly Series Lecture. Details to come.
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Best wishes, Carl
Originally published September 24, 2017. Copyright 2017 Carl Zimmer.