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Updated: Oct 22, 2025

Optimized Bone Sampling Protocols for the Retrieval of Ancient DNA from Archaeological Remains
Published on: November 30, 2021
Mining museums for historical DNA: advances and challenges in museomics
Christopher J Raxworthy1, Brian Tilston Smith1
1Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, USA.
Abstract:
Historical DNA (hDNA), obtained from museum and herbarium specimens, has yielded spectacular new insights into the history of organisms. This includes documenting historical genetic erosion and extinction, discovering species new to science, resolving evolutionary relationships, investigating epigenetic effects, and determining origins of infectious diseases. However, the development of best-practices in isolating, processing, and analyzing hDNA remain under-explored, due to the substantial diversity of specimen preparation types, tissue sources, archival ages, and collecting histories. Thus, for hDNA to reach its full potential, and justify the destructive sampling of the rarest specimens, more experimental work using time-series collections, and the development of improved methods to correct for data asymmetries and biases due to DNA degradation are required.
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