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Hendrik Poinar holds a 9,000-year-old human feces fossil
in his right hand and a 30,000-year-old cave bear tooth in his
left. Photo credit: Chantall Van Raay
DNA from fossils and the benefit
of time travel
Fossils have provided us with a window
into the past and spark both our imagination and our interest
in the science that unravels their secrets.
It’s only been recently that scientists have been able
to study ancient DNA. About 20 years ago, scientists were able
to separately describe two different DNA sequences: one from
a quagga – an extinct type of zebra – and the other
from an ancient Egyptian individual.
What made these DNA sequences exceptional was that they were
derived from a 140 year-old animal specimen (the quagga) and
a 2400 year-old human mummy.
Ancient DNA research – defined broadly as the retrieval
of DNA sequences from museum specimens, archaeological finds,
fossil remains and other unusual sources of DNA – only
really became possible with the advent of some fascinating lab
techniques.
Today, we have reports of analyses of fossils that are hundreds,
thousands – even hundreds of thousands of years old.
Ancient DNA research gives scientists the ability to travel
back in time, giving us a glimpse of past populations with an
eye to answering fascinating questions such as: whether or not
Neanderthals and modern humans interbred; what Paleoamerindians
were eating several thousand years ago and whether mammoths
were the closer relatives of the Indian or African elephants
we see today in zoos.
This ability to uncover trace quantities of highly degraded
nucleic acids from fossils, or environmental samples, opens
a whole new door in the evolutionary arena, an actual Kodak
moment of the genetic past.
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Anthropologist Hendrik Poinar has received international
acclaim and media attention for his research on two
fronts: the discoveries he’s made about ancient
humans from their fossilized remains; and the work he’s
done determining the timing and origin of the human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from some of the oldest
samples of archival HIV, collected between 1959 and
1980.
An assistant professor in the departments
of Anthropology,
and Pathology
and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University, Poinar
arrived here from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Germany, where he was a post-doctoral
fellow from 2000-2003. He also completed a post-doctoral
fellowship at Oregon State University from 1999-2000,
after obtaining his Ph.D. from the Lüdwig Maximillians
Universität München.
Poinar chose McMaster over offers from Oxford and the
University of California at Berkeley and has established
a world-class molecular anthropology lab that will devise
novel techniques to extract information from ancient
DNA.
His specialty is the chemical and molecular analysis
of fossilized feces, or coprolites. He then uses his
findings to address evolutionary and anthropological
questions that range from the diet and gender differences
of hunter-gather populations to the language abilities
of Neanderthals to whether or not early humans interbred
with Neanderthals.
The author of more than 40 publications, including
book chapters and articles in leading journals such
as Nature and Science, Poinar’s
research has attracted significant grants from the provincial
and federal governments and he has also been named the
winner of the 2004
Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award.
Hendrik
Poinar's Home Page
Read the Daily News article
"A
tale of two relics: anthropologist takes an interdisciplinary
approach to big questions"
and the GlobeandMail.com article,"The
poop on ancient man"
This is a
free public lecture.
All are welcome!
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Hamilton Spectator Auditorium
Doors open @ 6:30 pm
Lecture begins at 7:00 pm
To reserve your seat
e-mail sciencecity@mcmaster.ca
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