The fast-expanding field of ancient DNA, formally known as paleogenetics, came of age in 2022, earning its pioneering scientist Svante Pääbo a Nobel prize for medicine and physiology.
Pääbo, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, developed methods to recover, sequence and analyze ancient DNA from fossils — a feat that took decades. Researchers are using the techniques today to answer fundamental questions about human history and the planet’s deep past.
Many of the discoveries upend assumptions about prehistoric times. When Pääbo’s lab in Leipzig sequenced the first Neanderthal genome in 2010, many were startled to learn that our own species Homo sapiens encountered and had babies with Neanderthals.
