Eske Willerslev
Encyclopedia
Eske Willerslev is a Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 evolutionary biologist notable for his pioneering work on Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA
Ancient DNA is DNA isolated from ancient specimens. It can be also loosely described as any DNA recovered from biological samples that have not been preserved specifically for later DNA analyses...

. He is currently a full professor at Copenhagen University and leader of the Ancient DNA and Evolution Group. He has received the Genius Award (Geniusprisen) of Danish Science journalists for his combination of groundbreaking research with an aggressive media strategy. Before becoming a scientist he lived for several years as a trapper in Siberia with his twin brother, anthropologist Rane Willerslev
Rane Willerslev
Rane Willerslev is a Danish anthropologist who is Professor at the Institute for Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics at the University of Aarhus, in the city of Aarhus, Denmark. He is also the director of the Ethnographic Collections at Moesgård Museum, Denmark...

.
His group is interested in understanding what caused the decreases in diversity of Megafauna
Megafauna
In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are "giant", "very large" or "large" animals. The most common thresholds used are or...

 after the last ice age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...

 and also tries to develop techniques to recover DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

 mostly from ice preserved specimens, such as DNA from sediments in ice cores and fossil bones found in permafrost. In 2010, a team led by Prof. Willerslev sequenced the genome of a 4.000 year old man from the Saqqaq culture
Saqqaq culture
The Saqqaq culture was a Paleo-Eskimo culture in Greenland.-Timeframe:...

 of Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

from his hair.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK