#ancient dna

[ochipi]

My professor and colleague in historic DNA:

“We were able to specify that all people buried here were all locals. No pilgrims or outsiders. All the skeletons lived here.”

My brain:

[ancientstuff]

Ancient DNA reveals West African ancestry in 7th-century skeletons from England

DNA from two 7th-century burials in England reveals recent West African ancestry, reshaping early medieval migration history.

The global movement of peoples from an early period shouldn't be a surprise. We've seen a ton of evidence for this in recent and not-so-recent digs.

[medievalistsnet]

What Ancient DNA Reveals About the Medieval Population of the Low Countries

A new DNA study reveals that the medieval male population of the Low Countries remained remarkably stable over 1,500 years, with local lineages shaped more by genetic drift and patrilocal traditions than by large-scale migration.

Read more

[ofruinsandmyth]

The Denisovan skull, Hebei GEO University

"In 2010, DNA analysis of a finger bone around 40,000 years old revealed that it came from a previously unknown group of ancient humans, dubbed the Denisovans after the cave in Siberia where the bone was found. But with no skulls, we had no idea what they looked like. Now, Denisovan DNA has been found in this 146,000-year-old skull found in China. It suggests these people had an unusual combination of features, with faces similar to ours, but with thick brow ridges."

Source: New Scientist

[scienceguy22]

Zombie squirrels of the Mammoth Steppe. When squirrels ate bison, not birdseed.

This was during the Ice Age in the Yukon 700,000 years ago. Squirrels were eating meat, such as the carcasses of bison, mammoths, horses, wolves, and big cats, as well as 100s of plant & insect species. Scientists know this because they found squirrel poop from back then, called coprolites, extracted DNA inside it & identified which animals or plants that DNA came from. Whatever DNA is inside the poop, that's what the squirrel ate. They were not tree squirrels. They remained on the ground & were about the size of modern Arctic ground squirrels (10-15 in long/25-38 cm) & weighed 1-3 lbs (0.45-1.4 kg).

You may think this is an unusual diet for squirrels, but the squirrels back then, as they are even today, are opportunistic scavengers. In fact, even today they may still eat meat when they find it, such as bird eggs; they eat nestlings, scavenge roadkill & insects & steal meat scraps. Squirrels that were omnivorous—eating plants, insects & meat—survived better in Yukon's harsh & brutal winters. Scientists easily located the Pleistocene toilets within or near their burrow systems. Even today, squirrels, as well as pikas, hyraxes, meerkats & rabbits, do not randomly poop all over the place. Instead, they pick a specific spot & return to it every day, & it is used by generations. So the latrine is basically a 700,000-year-old bathroom that became a scientific library.

[theweightofdivinity]

An angel who got trapped here…

and still chose to coexist.

One of the 144,000,

heaven-coded, earth-assigned,

a designed alignment.

Entangled in the density of form,

and still I cannot conform

to the norm in the fractured realm

where I was born.

[livequrious]

How a 4,000-Year-Old Sheep Solved a Bronze Age Plague Mystery

For decades, a profound mystery has lingered over the vast, windswept grasslands of Eurasia. It concerns a silent traveler, an invisible killer that moved with astonishing speed across a continent thousands of years before the age of mass transportation. During the Bronze Age, a period of great upheaval and migration from roughly 2900 to 500 BCE, a persistent plague haunted human settlements from…

How a 4,000-Year-Old Sheep Solved a Bronze Age Plague Mystery

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The Making of the Colossal Dire Wolves — World's First De-Extinction

7 April 2025

The dire wolf is no longer extinct—and this is the story of how Colossal made it happen.

Discover the advanced tools and technologies behind the revival of the dire wolf, why this breakthrough matters for the future of conservation, and what it means for endangered species across the globe.

In this video, you’ll hear directly from the scientists, conservationists, and visionaries who made the impossible possible.

This moment marks more than just a scientific achievement — it signals the start of a new era in biodiversity and ecological restoration.

The dire wolf is back, and for Colossal, this is only the beginning.

Credit: 3D models created by Visual Science

🐺🥹🤍