Deon de Jager

Originally trained as a conservation geneticist focusing on buffalo and antelope at the University of Pretoria, I am currently based at the University of Copenhagen where I am studying ancient and modern populations of African wildlife.

By using palaeogenomic techinques to obtain ancient DNA from mammalian fossils, I investigate both extinct and living species to determine how these have changed through time in relation to climatic and human impacts over the past 50,000 years or so, known as the Late Quaternary. Ultimately, this will improve our understanding of the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in Africa, and other continents, as well as provide valuable baseline data to help us conserve species through better understanding of when, where, and how genetic diversity has changed or been lost in the past.

I am currently a member of the IUCN SSC Conservation Genetics Specialist Group (https://consgen.org/), and specifically in the Africa section (https://www.congenafrica.com/). I am also a steering committee member of the Animal aDNA Research Community (AaRC: https://animal-adna.org/).