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FOSSILS ET AL
Ancient DNA extracted from Cretaceous fossils?
A team of researchers claims to have extracted DNA from Cretaceous specimens, but the work is still in preprint and raises many doubts.
A few days ago, an interesting article was published on Fossils et al., which excellently explained why it is currently not possible to extract DNA from Mesozoic specimens, a time range between about 250 and 66 million years ago. However, this unpublished work, from leaves some doubts for various reasons. But first, let’s take a moment to understand what’s aDNA (or Ancient DNA).
This term refers to any trace of DNA (nuclear and/or mitochondrial) originating from the remains of deceased organisms, or in exceptional cases, from fossilized traces. This is because DNA can survive for thousands of years, even up to 500–700 thousand years (proteins last a bit longer). To be more precise, in the last 2–3 years, we have managed to study ancient samples up to about 2 million years old (thanks, mammoths).
