Ancient DNA News

April 26, 2024

Top Headlines

Fossil Frogs Share Their Skincare Secrets

Apr. 23, 2024 — Palaeontologists have solved a hundred-year-old mystery of how some fossil frogs preserve their fleshy parts -- it's all down to their skin. Palaeontologists studied 45-million-year-old fossil frogs from the Geiseltal site in central Germany. ...

RNA's Hidden Potential: New Study Unveils Its Role in Early Life and Future Bioengineering

Apr. 18, 2024 — The origin of life continues to remain a matter of debate. The ribonucleic acid (RNA) world hypothesis proposes that 'ribozymes' which store genetic information and possess catalytic functions may ...

Digging Up New Species of Australia and New Guinea's Giant Fossil Kangaroos

Apr. 15, 2024 — Palaeontologists have described three unusual new species of giant fossil kangaroo from Australia and New Guinea, finding them more diverse in shape, range and hopping method than previously thought. The three new species are of the extinct genus ...

Do Some Mysterious Bones Belong to Gigantic Ichthyosaurs?

Apr. 9, 2024 — Several similar large, fossilized bone fragments have been discovered in various regions across Western and Central Europe since the 19th century. The animal group to which they belonged is still the subject of much debate to this day. A study could ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:26am EDT

Geobiology: New Placozoan Habitat Discovered

Apr. 11, 2024 — Traces of DNA in the stomachs of predatory snails give a team og geobiologists new insights into the ecology of ...

Early Dinosaurs Grew Up Fast, but They Weren't the Only Ones

Apr. 3, 2024 — The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a new ...

DNA Study IDs Descendants of George Washington from Unmarked Remains, Findings to Aid Service Member IDs Going Back to World War II

Mar. 28, 2024 — New DNA sequencing technologies have identified the historical remains of George Washington's grandnephews, Samuel Walter Washington and George ...

Ancient DNA Reveals the Appearance of a 6th Century Chinese Emperor

Mar. 28, 2024 — What did an ancient Chinese emperor from 1,500 years ago look like? A team of researchers reconstructed the face of Chinese Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou using DNA extracted from his remains. The study ...

Rays Were More Diverse 150 Million Years Ago Than Previously Thought

Mar. 21, 2024 — Scientists have explored the puzzling world of rays that lived 150 million years ago and discovered a previously hidden diversity -- including a new ray species. This study significantly expands the ...

Higher Carnivorous Dinosaur Biodiversity of Famous Kem Kem Beds, Morocco

Mar. 12, 2024 — An international team of palaeontologists applied recently developed methods to measure theropod (carnivorous) dinosaur species diversity. The newly applied method uses both traditional phylogenetic ...

Modeling the Origins of Life: New Evidence for an 'RNA World'

Mar. 4, 2024 — Scientists provide fresh insights on the origins of life, presenting compelling evidence supporting the 'RNA World' hypothesis. The study unveils an RNA enzyme that can make accurate copies of other ...

Change in Gene Code May Explain How Human Ancestors Lost Tails

Feb. 28, 2024 — A genetic change in our ancient ancestors may partly explain why humans don't have tails like ...

Ancient DNA Reveals Down Syndrome in Past Human Societies

Feb. 20, 2024 — By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from ...

A Lighthouse in the Gobi Desert

Feb. 14, 2024 — A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of ...

An Evolutionary Mystery 125 Million Years in the Making

Mar. 4, 2024 — Plant biologists have uncovered an evolutionary mystery over 100 million years in the making. It turns out that sometime during the last 125 million years, tomatoes and Arabidopsis thaliana plants ...

Scientists ID Burned Bodies Using Technique Used for Extracting DNA from Woolly Mammoths, Neanderthals

Feb. 29, 2024 — A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to ...

Vittrup Man Crossed Over from Forager to Farmer Before Being Sacrificed in Denmark

Feb. 14, 2024 — Vittrup Man was born along the Scandinavian coast before moving to Denmark, where he was later sacrificed, according to a new ...

Some Pre-Roman Humans Were Buried With Dogs, Horses and Other Animals

Feb. 14, 2024 — Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might ...

The Hidden Rule for Flight Feathers -- And How It Could Reveal Which Dinosaurs Could Fly

Feb. 12, 2024 — Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...

Surprisingly Vibrant Color of 12-Million-Year-Old Snail Shells

Feb. 9, 2024 — Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...

New Fossil Site of Worldwide Importance Uncovered in Southern France

Feb. 9, 2024 — Nearly 400 exceptionally well-preserved fossils dating back 470 million years have been discovered in the south of France by two amateur paleontologists. The discovery provides unprecedented ...

Scandinavia's First Farmers Slaughtered the Hunter-Gatherer Population, Study Finds

Feb. 8, 2024 — Following the arrival of the first farmers in Scandinavia 5,900 years ago, the hunter-gatherer population was wiped out within a few generations, according to a new study. The results, which are ...

Thailand's Iron Age Log Coffin Culture

Feb. 6, 2024 — A mortuary practice known as Log Coffin culture characterizes the Iron Age of highland Pang Mapha in northwestern Thailand. Between 2,300 and 1,000 years ago, individuals were buried in large wooden ...

New Species of Jurassic Pterosaur Discovered on the Isle of Skye

Feb. 5, 2024 — A new species of pterosaur from specimens found on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, has been ...

Rare 3D Fossils Show That Some Early Trees Had Forms Unlike Any You've Ever Seen

Feb. 2, 2024 — In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new ...

Excavated Dolmen in Sweden One of the Oldest in Scandinavia

Jan. 29, 2024 — The first analysis results now confirm that the grave in Tiarp is one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden. The researchers noted that some parts of the people buried in the grave are ...

DNA from Preserved Feces Reveals Ancient Japanese Gut Environment

Jan. 24, 2024 — DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a new ...

Ancient Brown Bear Genomes Sheds Light on Ice Age Losses and Survival

Jan. 24, 2024 — The brown bear is one of the largest living terrestrial carnivores, and is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike many other large carnivores that went extinct at the end of the ...

Student Discovers 200-Million-Year-Old Flying Reptile

Jan. 22, 2024 — Gliding winged-reptiles were amongst the ancient crocodile residents of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, researchers at the have ...

Key Moment in the Evolution of Life on Earth Captured in Fossils

Jan. 15, 2024 — New research has precisely dated some of the oldest fossils of complex multicellular life in the world, helping to track a pivotal moment in the history of Earth when the seas began teeming with new ...

Oldest Known Fossilized Skin Is 21 Million Years Older Than Previous Examples

Jan. 11, 2024 — Researchers have identified a 3D fragment of fossilized skin that is at least 21 million years than previously described skin fossils. The skin, which belonged to an early species of Paleozoic ...

Prehistoric Person With Turner Syndrome Identified from Ancient DNA

Jan. 11, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new technique to measure the number of chromosomes in ancient genomes more precisely, using it to identify the first prehistoric person with mosaic Turner syndrome ...

'Juvenile T. Rex' Fossils Are a Distinct Species of Small Tyrannosaur

Jan. 2, 2024 — A new analysis of fossils believed to be juveniles of T. rex now shows they were adults of a small tyrannosaur, with narrower jaws, longer legs, and bigger arms than T. rex. The species, Nanotyrannus ...

Insects Already Had a Variety of Defense Strategies in the Cretaceous

Dec. 21, 2023 — Analyses of amber show that insect larvae were already using a wide variety of tactics to protect themselves from predators 100 million years ...