UMD Biologist Wins Emmy for Documentary on Quest to Find, Sequence Ancient DNA

University of Maryland biologist Sean B. Carroll won his third Emmy this month for outstanding science documentary filmmaking for "Hunt for the Oldest DNA.” But his latest win felt different because he helped capture science unfolding in real time, with no guarantee of success.

The film, which was honored at the 2025 News & Documentary Emmy Awards, follows Danish evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev's seemingly impossible quest to find DNA in a 2-million-year-old soil sample from northern Greenland. What emerged was genetic evidence of a lush forest ecosystem that existed before the Ice Age—the oldest DNA ever sequenced.

For Carroll, who served as executive producer before stepping down as head of Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, the project represents the culmination of an adventure in science storytelling that few studios could attempt. It also reinforces the importance of science communication in an era of fragmented media and skepticism, he said.

“Being nominated for an award of this level means that we’ve received peer recognition in the film world, and winning is just the cherry on top,” said Carroll, a Distinguished University Professor of Biology. “It’s a testament to the work we’ve all done to convey Eske’s revolutionary research and get exciting new science out there to the public.”

When Carroll and the production team first learned of Willerslev’s research in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, they faced a filmmaker’s nightmare: attempting to document a science story with no guaranteed ending. For 15 years, Willerslev had been pursuing a radical hunch: that DNA could survive in ancient frozen sediments.

“At the time, scientists typically studied ancient DNA in fossilized bones, which only allowed them to learn about organisms that lived up to about 1 million years ago. That was the limit on how long DNA could survive and be recovered from ancient samples. Basically, we had a ‘million-year barrier’ that was seemingly insurmountable,” Carroll explained. “And Eske had the crazy idea of looking for DNA in much older soil, which had never been attempted before. Everyone thought it was impossible.”

The production timeline stretched longer as Carroll’s Tangled Bank team worked with Willerslev’s team, Handful of Films writer-director Niobe Thompson, PBS’s “NOVA” series and various other partners around the globe. The team followed Willerslev as his team gathered and analyzed the DNA evidence to reconstruct an ancient ecosystem, and then through the long publication process as experts required a very high level of proof for the extraordinary claims of the oldest DNA ever recovered.

“We made a film about science in progress, which is really difficult for most other studios to do because of the risk of things not working out. You’re not sure when the film will be ready or if there even will be a film, depending on the results of the research,” Carroll said.

The team’s gamble paid off spectacularly. Willerslev’s eventual discovery of ancient DNA preserved in soil and piecing together of the fragments broke the infamous million-year barrier that stopped scientists from understanding an entire vanished ecosystem from the dawn of the Ice Age. When the documentary aired, it gave audiences a front-row seat for every setback and breakthrough Willerslev and his team members encountered on his journey.

Despite his departure from Tangled Bank, Carroll hasn’t left visual storytelling behind. He continues to work on other films, including three Tangled Bank projects still to come and a film adaptation of his book “A Series of Fortunate Events.” Carroll believes that “Hunt for the Oldest DNA” stands as a testament to the power of patient, collaborative filmmaking to capture not just scientific breakthroughs but the human stories of persistence and passion behind them.

“If we don’t tell our stories, how does anyone know what we do? And why would anyone be inspired?” Carroll said. “Scientists need to get their stories told.”