When ancient DNA studies began to gain attention, little more than a decade ago, the view took hold among geneticists that ...

Ancient DNA shows that hunter-gatherers in northwestern Europe endured for millennia, with women driving a gradual cultural shift toward farming.

Fragments of DNA from long-extinct human relatives still circulate in modern genomes, and in some cases they do more than linger. They actively shape how people survive in extreme environments. The ...

A glowing, digital double helix represents the billions of base pairs scientists analyze when sequencing ancient DNA. In 1976, workers excavating a tunnel for the Toronto subway system came across ...

Long before the Black Death killed millions across Europe in the Middle Ages, an earlier, more elusive version of the plague spread across much of Eurasia. For years, scientists were unsure how the ...