Generally, the best way to study how the Earth was in prehistoric times is to learn more about the animals that lived back then. That’s where Beth Shapiro comes in. As a self styled evolutionary paleogeneticist, she travels to the cold reaches of the world to find DNA samples of long extinct animals such as mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. She hopes to learn more about what life was like for these ancient animals, and how they responded to a rapidly changing climate. She brought with her some samples she pulled from the Canadian permafrost, and you may be surprised at what she found.
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Recorded June 2011; Posted July 2011