Neolithic ‘chewing gum’ remains reveal the diet, microbes and repairs made by early Alpine farmers thanks to DNA trapped in ...

Based on genetic material preserved in birch bark tar from Estonia, researchers found that the teen likely had brown hair and ...

In an unprecedented discovery, scientists have reconstructed the complete human genome of a Stone Age woman from a 5,700-year-old piece of birch pitch — a type of prehistoric chewing gum — found at ...

It's time now for our regular science news roundup with our friends at NPR's Short Wave podcast, Regina Barber and Pien Huang. Hey, y'all. PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Hey, Juana. REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hey.

People have chewed natural resins and tree bark for thousands of years, from Finnish birch tar to the ancient Greek mastic ...

About 10,000 years ago, a group of hunter-gatherers were hanging out in what is now south-western Sweden chewing pieces of birch tar. New analysis of that substance reveals that they may have had very ...

5,700 years ago, a woman in what is now Denmark chewed a lump of birch-bark pitch for a while and then dropped it. Millennia later, the DNA she left behind reveals her entire genome, a census of the ...