Episode 34 - Ancient DNA

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Natural Sciences, Education, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2018

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Only a few decades ago, the idea of pulling DNA from long-dead organisms was the stuff of science fiction, but the field of ancient DNA is now totally real and thriving. In this episode, we discuss how we get DNA from ancient specimens and just a bit of the incredible world of information paleogenetics opens up for scientists. In the news: Another ancient croc-cousin, human and sloth footprints, swimming human evolution, and the oldest wolverine! Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:30Main discussion, Part 1: 00:31:00Main discussion, Part 2: 00:56:30 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast/ PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Muscial Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, Will.
0:21.4	Hello, David.
0:28.0	Hello, listeners, and welcome to episode 34 of the Common Descent podcast.
0:28.8	Woohoo.
0:34.6	Today, we are discussing the subject of ancient DNA.
0:36.4	Dino DNA.
0:37.7	Not Dino DNA, ancient DNA. Oh, okay. Not Dino DNA.
0:38.7	Ancient DNA.
0:39.3	Oh, okay.
0:41.6	Which is different, as we will see.
0:50.2	Ancient DNA is the thing and also the field of study that examines DNA from dead stuff.
1:00.1	Dead stuff ranging as recent as, you know, museum specimens of things that are a couple decades old to very ancient things.
1:09.3	Ancient DNA, paleogenetics has become a really, really important field in paleontology and in investigating the past. And we are going to do a quick overview of sort of
1:13.7	what goes into it, how DNA preserves in the first place, how you extract DNA, and what sort of
1:19.9	things we can learn from ancient DNA about creatures of the past. This episode has also been
1:26.0	requested. I was requested on the survey,
1:29.3	which all those requests are anonymous.
1:31.0	Whoops.
1:31.3	So thank you to that anonymous requester
1:33.2	for requesting this.
1:34.4	Thanks, survey.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Common Descent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Common Descent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.