The Ancient World: Back to life! Back to reality?

Mummies and skeletons can provide us with a snapshot of ancient life along the river Nile. In particular, they can tell us about the diseases that affected people at the time. But too many studies focus on individual diseases or an individual person. Instead, we must look at the range of diseases in these ancient populations, their effects on different groups of people, and how they spread amongst populations. By moving our focus out, we can begin to build a picture of public health in the ancient populations that called the river Nile home, the ancient Egyptians and Nubians.

Jurassic Park imagines a world in which dinosaurs have been brought back from extinction, but how close is this science fiction to science fact? In this talk we will explore the modern science of palaeontology and the varied techniques we can use to reconstruct past life, using biomechanics, computer tomography, and high powered X-rays. We finally turn to the practical realities, ethics and implications of genetic technologies for resurrecting extinct organisms.

The largest, most iconic dinosaurs lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic. These giants include dinosaurs like Diplodocus, Brontosaurus, and Brachiosaurus. These behemoths lived in a world unlike our own. An international team of scientists have been collaborating on a new site, The Jurassic Mile in Wyoming (USA), to unlock secrets from this Jurassic world. Deploying a combination of technology from laser scanners to particle accelerators we can learn more about these extinct titans. Featured in BBC Secrets of the Jurassic Dinosaurs, this site has many more surprises to be revealed.