Ancient DNA: Past and Present
Come listen to researchers presenting their project and ask them your questions!
Thursday 20th May 2021
EVENT 7PM-8PM
Understanding past and present biodiversity with DNA
DNA is transforming the way scientists monitor and survey of biodiversity, allowing to study animals without even touching them.
What can a shrimp or a sponge tell us about the fish that live around them? Can a bat inform us about the insect pests in a rice crop? How can we know which pollinators
visited the flowers in our garden? I will tell you some stories about how biologists use DNA to study animals from deep-sea shrimps to endangered newts to madagascar bats.
Sandra Garces-Pastor
Researcher, UiT
The hidden diversity of extinct megafauna
Ancient DNA is revolutionizing our understanding of prehistoric animals and how they lived. In this talk, I will give an overview of ancient DNA and how we recover useful information from it. I will then tell stories of what we have learned about two ice age animals: mammoths and horses. For the mammoths, I will show how we recovered the oldest-ever ancient DNA and used this to resolve the origins of mammoths in North America. I will then tell the story of how we use ancient DNA to solve the mystery of what the puzzling North American stilt-legged horses were.
Twitter:@PalaeoPete
Peter Heintzman
Associate Professor , UiT