The Next Frontier Of Ancient DNA

The quagger was a zebra-like animal that was hunted to extinction in 1883. And I've been looking for the remains of a very specific one. And I think I found it. I think it's one of these quaggers here in Ma Germany.

Believe it or not, this quagger has played a big role in science and even in our understanding of human evolution. In 1984, scientists successfully extracted DNA from the preserved muscle tissue of a quagger from mates, one of those quaggers. They were able to discover that the quagger and the zebra last shared a common ancestor about 3 to 4 million years ago. But much more importantly, they discovered for the first time that ancient DNA could be preserved in tissue long after an animal had died.

And just like that, the age of ancient DNA was upon us. Since then, ancient DNA has become one of the most important tools we have in understanding human evolution, revealing entirely new branches of our evolutionary tree and tying us intimately to our closest cousins. Shout out Neandertos. It truly was a scientific revolution.

There's no two ways about it. Today though, I want to discuss the next step in that revolution. Getting DNA from dirt. This whole branch of genetics is called sedimentary ancient DNA or Ceda DNA for short.

And there was one thing I really wanted to know first. Where does this genetic material come from? Questions I wrote to you. I asked is it Pooh/We or someone walking past, you know, is it like tiny microscopic fossils?

Where what's where's this DNA coming from? I think it's probably a combination of both. That's Elena Zavala, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and sedimentary ancient DNA expert. She was one of the geneticists behind a very highprofile study into Denisa cave.

I mean, we do see evidence um that where you have places of higher occupation, there's more DNA from an individual or from a a group. So for example in again I go back to Denise of a cave there are relatively few skeletal remains from hyenas in Denise of a cave in certain subsets but you know it was basically occupied by hyenas so they were living eating defecating everything in this cave but of course if you have a body that's there um a carcass it's uh fluids are also oozing ...