Scientists have been using ancient DNA to investigate questions about extinct animals since 1984, when researchers recovered two pieces of DNA from a museum specimen of a quagga, a zebra-like species that went extinct in the 19th century. Over the past 40 years, advancements in technology have allowed scientists to sequence older and older DNA from animals and plants, with the current record held by a 2.4 million-year-old Greenland ecosystem.
But could DNA potentially last even longer? Because DNA preservation depends on a huge number of environmental factors, scientists are still grappling with the question of how long DNA can theoretically and realistically last.
“It’s less than people thought in the early ’90s but more than people thought in the early 2000s,” Tom Gilbert, director of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, told Live Science. “The reason I say that is the early ’90s were very much the ‘Jurassic Park’ era.”
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