SCIENTISTS in York have identified fossil proteins in a 3.8 million year-old ostrich eggshell.
The discovery could provide valuable new insights into the evolutionary tree and go much further back in time than was previously thought.
The study, published in the journal eLife, suggests the fragments in the ancient eggshell could provide genetic information almost 50 times older than any DNA record.
The findings shed new light on how animals and humans lived and interacted in the past, how some species became extinct, and why some evolved and continue to thrive today.
The team from the University of York’s archaeology department teamed up with the, University of Sheffield and University of Copenhagen.
They analysed and tracked egg fossils from sites in Tanzania and South Africa, where it is expected DNA and proteins would not survive the extreme environment.
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