Recovering animal genomes from fossils and museum specimens makes it possible to reconstruct the evolutionary history of animals, and thus to investigate how climate change, hybridization and natural selection have shaped biodiversity through time.
Zoological research within palaeobiology is primarily conducted at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and focuses on reconstructing the evolutionary history of animals using ancient genomic data from fossils and museum specimens. By generating and analysing genomes from ancient and historical populations, our work investigates speciation, population dynamics, adaptation, and extinction across deep time scales. The research spans a wide range of Pleistocene and Holocene species, from mammals to insects, and has revealed how climate change, demographic fluctuations, and hybridization have shaped animal diversity. By integrating genomic data with ecological, archaeological, and geological evidence, these studies provide new insights into long-term evolutionary processes and the origins of present-day biodiversity.