It is time for ancient DNA to sweat the small stuff

Abstract

When one thinks of the field of ancient DNA it conjures images of extinct megafauna, from mammoths and woolly rhinos, through to the giant, flightless elephant bird (but hopefully not dinosaurs – despite the pervasive idea of ‘dino DNA’ from Jurassic park). These taxa have fascinating evolutionary histories, and their extinction stories need to be told. At the other end of the vertebrate scale, however, is the often neglected ‘small stuff’ – lizards, frogs, and other herpetofauna. But here's the rub – extracting DNA from the bones of this ‘small stuff’ is not only difficult, it often destroys the sample. In this issue, Scarsbrook et al. (2023) describe a new way to study the ancient (or historical) DNA of small vertebrates that is minimally destructive. The authors use the method to reconstruct the dynamic evolutionary history of New Zealand geckos and make new insights into how remnant populations should be managed. This work provides some key insights into New Zealand geckos but also opens up opportunities of biomolecular research on the smallest of vouchered vertebrate samples held within museum collections.