IN 2015, SCIENTISTS FROM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON and Imperial College London reported the recovery of ancient tissue structures from 75-million-year-old dinosaur bones. Nature Communications published the findings on June 9, 2015, the day that Jurassic World premiered in Hollywood.1 The film was released three days later to audiences across sixty countries, generating $550 million worldwide and ranking as the fourth-highest-grossing film in history. The coincidental timing did not go unnoticed. A media article from The Independent in London covered the story: “Just days before Steven Spielberg releases his latest dinosaur blockbuster in the shape of Jurassic World—the fourth film in the franchise—scientists have announced that they have found evidence of red blood cells and protein preserved in 75-million-year-old dinosaur fossils.”2 There was no evidence for dinosaur DNA, the main motif driving Michael Crichton’s and Steven Spielberg’s original filming of Jurassic Park, but scientists saw evidence of protein preservation. They also saw evidence for what looked like the remnants of blood cells.
This study was not the first to report the potential preservation of biomolecules or soft tissue structures from the days of the dinosaurs. There were earlier reports from the 1990s that offered evidence for this phenomenon too. Further, this 2015 study was not the first to attract media attention or to be framed with the fame of a major blockbuster movie. Indeed, this echoed a particular event reminiscent of the 1990s when Raúl J. Cano and a team of researchers in California announced they had extracted and sequenced DNA from a 120–135-million-year-old insect preserved in amber. Their discovery was reported in Nature on June 10, 1993, the day after the first Jurassic Park film premiered and the day before its public release worldwide.3 A New York Times article, “DNA from the Age of the Dinosaurs Is Found,” acknowledged the timeliness of the publication with the premiere, even though the authors argued it was coincidental.4 Coincidence or not, over the past three decades, press and public interest have followed the search for molecules in fossils, especially the search for DNA from fossils, extremely closely. Publicity has followed the search for DNA from fossils so closely, in fact, that a whole scientific field has been shaped by its ever growing celebrity and the controversies that ensued from it.
This book documents the development of the relatively young scientific field known as ancient DNA research, revealing the intimate interaction between science and the media in its evolution from a speculative, esoteric idea into a credible, revolutionary approach to the study of evolutionary history. Today, ancient DNA research is a fast-paced, high-cost, high-stakes, and technologically savvy practice that continuously challenges our assumptions about the past and the means through which to discover it. The field has captured professional and popular attention as researchers have searched for multimillion-year-old dinosaur DNA and recovered the genomes of extinct mammoths, ancient diseases, early humans, and our archaic ancestors (the Neanderthals and Denisovans) in an attempt to refine or even rewrite our understanding of how life came to be. Given the profound nature of findings generated by scientists in this field, a history of ancient DNA research offers the opportunity to understand how the study of fossils has impacted evolutionary biology and our conceptions of evolutionary history. Even more interesting, however, is the field’s uniquely high-profile character among press and public audiences. A history of ancient DNA research offers the opportunity to understand the intricate interchange between science and media in terms of how the practice, process, and communication of science were in turn influenced by it.
I offer in these pages the first historical, philosophical, and sociological account of the search for DNA from fossils that addresses its disciplinary development over a thirty-year period, from the 1980s to today, in the context of the mass media, celebrity culture, and modern science communication movement. Drawing on historical and archival material, as well as original interviews with more than fifty scientists from North America to Europe and Australia, I explore ancient DNA research’s formation and explain its relationship with the media by examining its close connection to de-extinction, the science and technology of resurrecting extinct species. In doing so, I reveal how the search for DNA from fossils developed into a discipline under the influence of intense press and public interest, particularly as this new line of research coincided with and was catapulted into the media spotlight by the book and movie Jurassic Park.
As the search for ancient DNA evolved from the 1980s to the present, the researchers involved in it responded to the field’s technological challenges and increasing identity as a celebrity science. Over the years, they became concerned about “contamination” in both a literal and figurative sense. Contamination, in the literal and technical understanding of the term, refers to potential exposure of exogenous DNA from the environment, bacteria, and even humans. For example, a specimen’s exposure to other DNA sources can happen over time or through handling in a museum collection or lab. This issue of contamination is further heightened by the already degraded and fragmented composition of DNA from ancient and extinct organisms. Therefore, it can be difficult for researchers to determine what genetic sequences, if any, belong to the actual specimen under study. This question of ancient DNA authenticity was a particular problem for scientists in the early days of the discipline’s development. Authenticity was a prerequisite for credibility, on which both the success of the practice and the reputation of practitioners promoting it depended.
At the same time, scientists were also worried about the influence of celebrity. Indeed, some researchers, working both inside and outside the discipline, viewed the hype around the search for DNA from fossils as a further and more figurative source of contamination, but one that was no less real. According to some scientists, disproportionate and undeserved media interest or influence had the adverse effect of contaminating their credibility. Interestingly enough, just as media attention seemed to undermine the young field, it empowered it too. Indeed, the media served as a crucial component to its growth in terms of its initial formation and overall identity. Over the years, the press consistently publicized the nascent science, but scientists also purposefully fashioned their own opportunities for attention. This intentional exchange between scientists and the media—specifically around the idea of discovering DNA from some of the world’s most ancient and charismatic creatures, such as dinosaurs or mammoths—influenced publication timing, grant funding, research agendas, and professional recruitment. I argue that scientists’ concerns about contamination, as related to both ancient DNA authenticity and the influence of celebrity, and the way they articulated those concerns privately as well as publicly, played a fundamental role in driving, even defining, ancient DNA research as a scientific and technological practice in its own right.
ANCIENT DNA RESEARCH
For this book, ancient DNA research is broadly defined as the practice of extracting, sequencing, and analyzing degraded or damaged DNA from long-dead organisms, ranging from hundreds or hundreds of thousands to even millions of years old. Although there is no convincing evidence for the long-term preservation of multimillion-year-old DNA, scientists have searched for it, and some continue to do so, in hopes of eventually accessing deep time. So far, the record for the oldest DNA, and in this case the oldest genome, comes from 1-million-year-old mammoth teeth frozen in the permafrost of northeastern Siberia.5 Since the specimen reaches all the way back to the million-year mark, this is an especially remarkable achievement, considering that one of the earliest milestone studies in this field involved the recovery of a modest number of DNA sequences from skin and tissue samples of a 140-year-old extinct horse-like mammal that once roamed the plains of South Africa.6 Reflecting on these studies side by side, it seems strange to refer to such a specimen as ancient or the genetic material as ancient DNA. However, in the writing and telling of the history of ancient DNA research, scientists reference specimens from the recent to the more distant past in their own accounts, namely because one of the primary objectives of this line of work is to better understand the fickle nature of molecular preservation over time.
Indeed, the term “ancient DNA” is not necessarily used to denote the age of the DNA but to highlight characteristic damage patterns that occur as genetic material breaks down after an organism has died. After an organism dies, its body decays due to internal chemical as well as external degradation processes, leaving little more than skeletal remains of a creature long gone. If any DNA is left, it is often chemically altered, resulting in fragmented sequences. This results in a lower quality and quantity of sequences when compared with modern genetic material. Further, the length of time an organism has been left to decay as well as the type of environment in which it has been left to decay play a role in how much DNA may be preserved. Considering this, research into DNA from dead organisms requires specialized skills, knowledge, and technologies to conduct it. Thus, many practitioners are invested in adapting state-of-the-art molecular biological techniques and high-throughput sequencing technologies to optimize the recovery of ancient DNA, be it from an organism a few hundred years old or a few thousand years old.
In addition to the wide temporal range of organisms that fall under the definition of ancient DNA research, there are numerous organisms from which DNA can be extracted. Ancient DNA, for example, can be recovered from plants, animals, humans, and bacteria, and it can be preserved in skin, tissues, and even bone if the bone is not a fully mineralized fossil. An organism’s status as a fossil or subfossil matters greatly when considering the possibility that some cellular or molecular structures may be preserved. A fully mineralized fossil is unlikely to preserve DNA, because its organic components have decayed and been replaced by minerals from the surrounding sediment in which the organism died. A subfossil, on the other hand, is only a partially mineralized organism and therefore may retain some of its organic components. If this is the case, it is possible that cellular and molecular components remain intact. On this point, it is also crucial to consider whether the specimen under study exists as a piece of skin, tissue, or bone. These various substances may have different capacities to preserve molecules, which in turn can affect scientists’ approach to the isolation and extraction of genetic material.7 Such differences are important, and I reference specifics regarding what type of specimen is under study and the corresponding findings when it is relevant to illustrating a methodological or conceptual point. Otherwise, I use the broad terms “ancient DNA research,” “the search for DNA from ancient and extinct organisms,” or “the search for DNA from fossils” interchangeably to refer to the general investigation of degraded and damaged DNA from various sources.
Over the past three to four decades, a number of phrases have been used by scientists, as well as media journalists, to refer to the search for ancient DNA. For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a small group of individuals started talking about the possibility of recovering DNA from long-dead organisms, using a range of terms to do so. They talked about “old DNA,” “extinct DNA,” “fossil DNA,” and “paleoDNA.”8 They also used the term “ancient DNA,” which later became the flagship label when it was adopted and advertised widely by a series of professional conferences on the topic hosted across the United Kingdom in the 1990s.9 Today, “ancient DNA research” remains the pervasive terminology, but references to “molecular archeology,” “molecular paleontology,” “archeogenetics,” and “paleogenetics” are also common, although they carry their own nuances in usage.10
METHODS AND SOURCES
From the 1980s to today, the ancient DNA community of practitioners has come to be international and interdisciplinary in its nature. Although the first labs to promote and popularize this practice originated in the United States and the United Kingdom, there are a number of research centers across North and South America as well as Europe, Asia, and Australia that specialize in this niche line of work. This geographical spread is matched by the disciplinary diversity of the practitioners themselves, coming from various scientific backgrounds, steeped in their own unique set of research questions, methods, and traditions. Consequently, the ancient DNA community is made up of many research subspecialties, and a history of the field can be told from various disciplinary viewpoints. An account of the practice and its practitioners, for example, can be told from a paleontological perspective or with exclusive interest in archeological and anthropological approaches, highlighting the unique contributions, challenges, and controversies in each research focus. In fact, most book-length works on the topic of ancient DNA research have addressed the latter and are firsthand accounts from ancient DNA researchers themselves.11
Recently, however, Elsbeth Bösl—a historian of science and the author of Doing Ancient DNA—traced the growth of ancient DNA research through a Eurocentric and disciplinary-specific focus on the field’s relationship with archeology. Drawing on an extensive review of scientific and popular publications, along with interviews with scientists from German-based institutions, Bösl addressed the nuances of the search for ancient DNA as applied to archeology. Notably, she investigated the controversies geneticists and archeologists encountered as they negotiated the explanatory power and hierarchical nature of their respective data sources, be it genetic sequences or ancient material artifacts, to shed light on cultural, social, and historical hypotheses about human evolution and migration.12
In contrast, I have approached the history of ancient DNA research in evolutionary biology much more broadly. In doing so, I have captured the events and experiences of those individuals who identify with the ancient DNA community through a mutual pursuit to discover old molecules from a broad range of sources for the primary purpose of studying the origin, evolution, and migration of extinct and extant organisms across the world. I have also included individuals who entertain the more visionary usages of old molecules, such as bringing extinct creatures back to life. Such a view of the field is not only exciting but necessary considering ancient DNA research’s truly interdisciplinary nature and ever increasing popularity with the media. This broad view of the field is essential for more fully understanding the key ideas, events, individuals, and experiences that have affected the evolution of this field as a whole.
My methods include examination of historical and archival material, as well as original interviews with more than fifty scientists from North America, Europe, and Australia. For the historical material, I draw on scientific publications on ancient DNA research and corresponding media articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and websites, as well as popular books and films. I have also consulted archival documents from the Allan Wilson Papers in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Further, I have had access to numerous unpublished documents such as original funding applications, manuscripts, newsletters, correspondences, and memoirs, along with conference and workshop programs, that were provided to me by scientists I interviewed.
As a historian of science, I used oral history methods to inform my interviews with fifty scientists working in and on the periphery of ancient DNA research. The selected interviewees represent researchers from disparate disciplines in evolutionary biology, including paleontology, archeology, anthropology, botany, epidemiology, evolutionary genetics, population genetics, molecular biology, microbiology, and computational biology. These interviewees work in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, and Israel. I tried to interview researchers who represent different scientific, epistemic, and generational views regarding the practice of ancient DNA research. Five additional group interviews with doctoral and postdoctoral researchers were also completed. The method for both individual and group interviews was semi-structured in style, on average two hours in length, and resulted in partial transcriptions for analysis. Interviewees were not selected at random but were a sample of the population of researchers in North America, Europe, and Australia.13
All scientists consented to interviews under the condition that quotations would be anonymized. Anonymization was chosen in order to protect researchers’ identities and reputations, which in turn allowed them to be more candid with sharing their experiences. For the most part, scientists enjoy discussing their achievements as well as the challenges they encounter. They often do so openly. However, science is a social process shaped by personalities, ambitions, political systems, cultural pressures, and capitalistic interests, just as much as it is shaped by our curiosity to understand the world around us. The field of ancient DNA research is a highly competitive one filled with controversy. In this discipline—very much like in the related fields of anthropology, archeology, and paleontology—specimens and money are rare, so competition for access to both is fierce. As such, many ancient DNA researchers felt more comfortable knowing their information would be anonymous, to avoid professional backlash. This is particularly important as most, if not all, interviewees are practicing scientists with their own careers and their students’ careers at stake. Therefore, interviewees have been anonymized with a random number. There are times when researchers are identified in association with quotations, but in these cases such quotations come from correspondence with permission to be identified or from previously published articles and documents.
Additionally, I came to this work with the intention of understanding ancient DNA research’s development in the context of the mass media, celebrity culture, and the modern science communication movement. Specifically, I was interested in examining the discipline’s relationship with the media and its fascination with the idea of resurrecting extinct species. The semi-structured interviews reflect this intention as interviewees were asked about their background and education, professional and theoretical commitments, perspectives on ancient DNA research, perspectives on the media, and views on the science of resurrecting extinct species.
The goal of the interview transcriptions was qualitative and thematic. Throughout the data collection, transcription, and analysis process, I listened for recurring themes in the retelling of the history. I also listened for deviations from shared themes in the form of subtle disagreements to outright controversies. The ancient DNA community is a contentious one, and the researchers working in it openly recognize that the field is full of colorful, ambitious, and provocative personalities. Throughout this work, I have incorporated the points of dispute and attempted to give a voice to every interviewee’s experiences. But despite interviewee individuality, there remains a clear, overarching theme about the field’s history that was shared among scientists across space and time: the role of contamination as it relates to ancient DNA authenticity and, even more interestingly, as it sometimes relates to celebrity and what some scientists saw as too much or the wrong kind of media attention. All interviewees agreed, though to differing degrees, on the role of the media and scientists’ interactions with the media as direct or indirect influences on the development of ancient DNA research.
SCIENCE IN THE SPOTLIGHT
This book is about the interplay between science and the media as the search for DNA from fossils developed from science fiction into a research reality from the 1980s to today. Over the past few decades, ancient DNA research has grown into much more than a public-facing science. I argue it has grown into a celebrity science. This new term—“celebrity science”—is the culmination of my analysis of the historical, archival, and interview evidence detailed in the forthcoming chapters and outlined more fully at the end of the book. Broadly, I define a celebrity science as a subject of science that exists and evolves under intense public interest and extreme media exposure. While media platforms present scientists working in or around the field of interest with opportunities for publicity, scientists are also pragmatic in fashioning their own occasions for public notice. Overall, a celebrity science is the outcome of prolonged publicity; it is the process and product of consistent science-media interactions around a scientific subject over an extended period of time. I suggest that the celebrity science concept helps make sense of ancient DNA research’s historical and sociological development into a legitimate scientific practice. I also suggest it can help other scholars make sense of other sciences operating in the media spotlight. Consequently, ancient DNA research is a case study of the making of a celebrity science but is by no means an exclusive example of it.
Four points are important. First, it is necessary to distinguish between publicity and celebrity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “publicity” as “notice or attention given to someone or something by the media,” whereas it describes “celebrity” as “the state of being well known.”14 To be clear, celebrity is more than publicity. Although most science and technology enjoy publicity from time to time via media headlines, article features, or special interviews, not all science falls subject to celebrity. In other words, all celebrity involves publicity, but not all publicity leads to celebrity.
Second, in using this new term of “celebrity science,” I am not referring to celebrity on the individual level by pointing to the interactions that a single scientist has with the media or the attention they receive.15 Rather, I am referring to celebrity on the group level and the interest that exists around a subject of science, with a view to how such interest affects the overall group of practitioners associated with it.16 In a celebrity science, it is the subject of science that is marketed as a commodity to be consumed by the public through the collective promotional activities of the media, research practitioners, and their respective institutions. In this case, for example, it is the celebrity that surrounds the practice of recovering DNA from fossils, its application to questions in evolutionary biology, and even the idea of potentially using it to bring back extinct creatures as embodied in the book and movie Jurassic Park.
Third, the celebrity science concept is intended to give a name to what is, in my view, a positive phenomenon. I am aware that “celebrity” carries historical and sociological baggage. It can denote fame and fortune but can also have negative connotations of vanity, superficiality, and inauthenticity. Indeed, celebrity is often used in a pejorative sense. Given this, the celebrity science concept runs the risk of being misinterpreted or reinterpreted across different audiences, and it may alienate some scientists for which this history was written. I hope it will not as I do not intend for the concept to be an unfavorable one.
Finally, I realize that in writing a narrative of ancient DNA research as a case study of celebrity science, I am further contributing to the making of a celebrity science. Doing so will reinforce the media attention in a way that will likely affect the researchers working in or around this practice. In addition, writing about celebrity science also makes me a product of it. There are consequences from situating my work in this context, both positive and negative. Nonetheless, the narrative argument of this book is not only timely but necessary, as media and celebrity culture are increasingly prevalent forces in society today. By situating ancient DNA research in the science communication movement and other shifts toward what science studies scholars call the “mediatization,” “medialization,” and “celebrification” of science, I show how its history is a product of these phenomena, and how it captures the effects of the ever tighter connection between science and the media.17