Internal talk: Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science

Dr. Elizabeth Jones from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences will give a short Zoom-based talk and Q&A session on her new popular science book entitled "Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science". 

The talk will be held over Zoom, and the link can be found in Tom Gilbert's email from March 4th. Find the abstract below.

Ancient DNA: The Making of a Celebrity Science

The untold story of the rise of a new scientific field and how Jurassic Park and popular media influenced its development

Ancient DNA research—the recovery of genetic material from long-dead organisms—is a discipline that developed from science fiction into a reality between the 1980s and today. Drawing on scientific, historical, and archival material, as well as original interviews with more than fifty researchers worldwide, Elizabeth Jones explores the field’s formation and explains its relationship with the media by examining its close connection to de-extinction, the science and technology of resurrecting extinct species. Jones reveals how the search for DNA from fossils flourished under the influence of intense press and public interest, particularly as this new line of research coincided with the book and movie Jurassic Park. Ancient DNA is the first account to trace the historical and sociological interplay between science and celebrity in the rise of this new research field. In the process, Jones argues that ancient DNA research is more than a public-facing science: it is a celebrity science.