Achievement

During the fall semester, Kyle Bocinsky conducted research in which he successfully extracted mitochondrial DNA from ancient turkey eggshell from the US Southwest, in an effort to correlate active turkey husbandry at archaeological sites with hypothesized genetic outcomes of domestication, such as a restriction of lineage diversity due to genetic bottlenecking. This represented the first successful attempt to extract DNA from ancient avian eggshell in the region. Given this success, this line of research is being expanded to include more collections and other sources of genetic material. The results of this research are presently being prepared for publication.