Abstract

Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) has transformed many disciplines in biology, but where it arguably has had the largest impact is the field of fossil DNA . While before MPS , analyses were generally limited to short fragments of mostly mitochodrial DNA , MPS has made it possible to obtain complete genomes from fossil remains, in fact even from large numbers of samples – as long as these are from humans or domesticated animals and their wild ancestors. Much less paleogenomic work has been done on species that have neither a close connection to humans nor a modern reference sequence available – two ‘traits’ that often co-occur. In my talk, I will discuss technical progress in paleogenomic analyses as well as how to analyse paleogenomic sequences from not-so-well-studied species like cave bears, Macrauchenia or hyenas and show which evolutionary insights can be obtained by such analyses