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Absence of Ancient DNA in Sub-Fossil Insect Inclusions Preserved in ‘Anthropocene’ Colombian Copal https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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Excellent. Thank you. Do you think there is any hope of finding intact DNA from something as old as Triassic period for example?

Doubtful. DNA is stable, but its stability is maintained by a cushy cellular environment which is full of scaffold molecules and repair enzymes. By contrast upon death outside the safety of an intact nucleus DNA will immediately start getting chewed apart by DNAses. Then there is UV, which will slowly but surely degrade DNA over time. I think the record for intact DNA is less than a million years; there is zero chance we could get something from 65 million years ago.

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