Colin, it's actually very feasible, in fact highly important DNA has been
extracted from early human fossils that are 100s or thousands of years old,
that has been used to build a picture of human evolution. DNA extracted from
frozen mammoth carcases in Siberia have led to some researchers to propose
reviving mammoth as a species (I truly hope this does not happen, but that's
not a discussion for here.) The same has been proposed for thylacines using
DNA extracted from preserved joeys in museums.
In other words recovery of DNA from museum specimens is well-established
science. It doesn't need to be a complete genome, just enough long fragments
to distinguish night parrot from its closest relatives (presumably ground
parrot and western ground parrot.)
Also distinguishing between human and parrot DNA would be a very simple
exercise - much more so than for ancient humans as described above.
Basically the scientists can look at a series of bands on a screen and see
which ones are human and which non-human, almost as easily as they could
distinguish a human and a bird footprint.
-----Original Message-----
From: colin trainor
Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2013 7:15 PM
To:
Subject: DNA confirms elusive Night Parrot found
DNA - Most specimens (?all but 3 perhaps) collected before 1900, so not sure
how useful it would be.
I'm ignorant of molecular approaches, but this detailed type of analysis may
not be possible on gnarly old specimens (?better on blood and fresh
tissue? - of which there is none)
To:
Subject:
DNA confirms elusive Night Parrot found
From:
Andrew Hobbs <>
Date:
Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:22:41 +0800
There are apparently 22 known specimens in various museums around the
world. I would think it quite possible to use DNA analysis on those to
make some estimates of population sizes etc. and their relationship to
the recent samples. I would be surprised if that is not already being
done or at least considered.
Cheers
Andrew
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