From eggshell, recreate the extinct genome

The process of genotyping an extinct bird has made great progress after Australian scientists on March 10 said they isolated DNA from the fossilized eggshell of the bird.

According to a team of scientists at Murdoch University in Western Australia, they used a number of laboratory chemicals and fingerprint technology to extract DNA from fossilized eggshell found in 13 sites. points in Australia, Madagascar and New Zealand.

Sketch of extinct birds.(Photo: scienceblogs.com)

Items include dinosaur eggs, relatives of African ostriches, extinction from the late 18th century; Elephant bird eggs - also resembling African ostriches, became extinct when Europeans occupied Madagascas as colonies in 1700.

Other results use fossilized eggshells of Australian and New Zealand ducks.

Scientists say that even though the number of separated DNA pairs only accounts for 1% of the genome of the extinct bird, the results could in principle help the bird genome.

They also hope to extract DNA from the emu ostrich eggs farther afield, about 19,000 years ago.

Until now, scientists have only isolated DNA from preserved bones or hair.

This is the first time they have separated DNA from fossilized eggshells. /.