It's Boom Times In Ancient DNA
Short Wave
NPR
4.7 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2023
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"For a long time, we thought, you know, maybe the limit is going to be around 100,000 years [old]. Or, maybe the limit is going to be around 300,000 years," says Shapiro, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz. "Well, now we've been working with a horse fossil in Alaska that's about 800,000 years old."
Beth's career has spanned the heyday of ancient DNA research, beginning in the late 1990s when rapid genetic sequencing technology was in its early days. She talked with Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott about the expanding range of scientific puzzles the young field is tackling — from new insights into our Neanderthal inheritance to deep questions about ecology and evolution.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. |
| 0:05.1 | For Beth Shapiro it all began with a dead bird, a very special dead bird. |
| 0:09.7 | Our entity in the lab was at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and as I would walk |
| 0:14.6 | through the museum back to our lab every day I would pass by what's arguably the museum's |
| 0:19.6 | most famous specimen, this dodo. |
| 0:21.7 | It was one of the few dodo's that was brought back to Europe before Europeans famously wiped |
| 0:27.4 | the birds from the face of the earth. |
| 0:29.5 | And Beth's knowledge, it was the only one with any soft tissue remaining. |
| 0:34.1 | The average dodo observer that might be a little more than a fun fact. |
| 0:37.7 | But to a young scientist like Beth interested in what was then the fledgling field of paleo |
| 0:42.7 | genomics, it was a potential treasure trove of ancient DNA. |
| 0:48.0 | Nobody knew much about the dodo at the time, including what kind of bird it was most closely |
| 0:53.1 | related to. |
| 0:54.1 | So I asked the curators if I could please have a tiny piece of that dodo and they said, |
| 0:58.7 | absolutely not. |
| 0:59.7 | Not until you prove to us that you're actually good at this. |
| 1:03.8 | And so I did try to extract DNA from some less precious extinct birds and was successful |
| 1:09.5 | and eventually got permission to get DNA from that dodo. |
| 1:13.9 | Her first scientific publication concluded for the very first time that the dodo was a type |
| 1:19.6 | of pigeon. |
| 1:20.6 | I'm not sure if people are very excited about that or not, but I was. |
| 1:24.4 | Maybe a little bit disappointing, but it's very closely related. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.