Since discovering my first fossils in a stream behind the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, when I was 10, I've been fascinated with clues to past life. I was so excited to find what turned out to be worm borings that my mother trekked me up to a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, who took the time to identify my specimens. And the next day, I wrote an essay in class about wanting to become an invertebrate paleontologist, flummoxing the poor teacher charged with encouraging a budding nerd.
I still have those fossils, nestled in compartments I built into a tattered yellow cigar box.
I didn't grow up to become an invertebrate paleontologist, but a geneticist. And discovering the DNA sequence of a novel genome intrigues me in much the same way as those ancient worm borings did, but it's even more telling, because genetic information reveals clues to the past and connects the ancient species to their modern descendants. Evolution.
That's why a recent report in Science Advances captured my attention: "A nuclear genome assembly of an extinct flightless bird, the little bush moa."
To continue reading, go to DNA Science, where this post first appeared.