New research shows that the existence of DNA in amber fossils is highly unlikely. The research team were unable to detect ancient DNA in sub-fossilised insects in copal that were 60 years to 10,600 years old, even though they were using sensitive next generation methods. This suggests that potential DNA survival in resin inclusions is not going to be better, and in fact may be worse, than that in air-dried museum whose DNA was retrieved using similar techniques. Early successes in the 1990’s extracting DNA from ambers up to 130 million years old proved false when a study at the Natural History Museum, London, was unable to replicate the process. Paper in PLOS ONE: bit.ly/17ZtYq9 The image is of 40-50 million-year-old baltic amber inclusions. The ants within the amber are about 4 mm long. Credit: Anders L. Damgaard amber-inclusions.dk
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 19:53:56 +0000
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