Professor Ian Barnes explains how the people who lived on the British Isles thousands of years ago transformed into the the population that live in...
Professor Ian Barnes (he/him)
Research leader and ancient DNA specialist
Prof Ian Barnes is a Research Leader at the Natural History Museum, where he focuses on the investigation of ancient biomolecules to resolve questions in archaeology, palaeontology and evolutionary biology. He has degrees in Archaeological Science (from Bradford) and Molecular Ecology (from York) and for the last 20 years he has been heavily involved in the development of ancient DNA. For much of that time, he has investigated the histories of living and extinct species in the Holarctic – a region from Europe across Asia into North America – between 100 and 10 thousand years ago. Recently, his major focus has been on the role of adaptation and migration in the human settlement of the British Isles.