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This 44-minute Seds Online talk explores how ancient sedimentary DNA provides revolutionary insights into Earth's evolutionary history. Learn about the emerging field that allows scientists to track species distribution across time and space, and reconstruct entire ecosystems dating back up to 2 million years. The presentation focuses on how microfossils—diverse, abundant, and well-preserved in various depositional environments—can be used to study evolutionary processes across the tree of life, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals. Discover the methodological developments underway to overcome challenges in isolating microfossils from sediments and retrieving their DNA, with pollen serving as a case study. The talk references significant research including the discovery of a 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland through environmental DNA, late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota, and the importance of eDNA taphonomy for ecological inference.
