ancestral

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

For the first time in more than 80 years, the fish swam in their ancestral river, where they had once been abundant.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 4, 2026

Now in her 80s, Lami Ezekiel remembers construction crews arriving in her ancestral home in Maitama, as it was destroyed to build Nigeria's capital, Abuja.

From BBC • Apr. 3, 2026

The granddaughter of a traumatized mouse may still carry a certain characteristic, but her fundamental mousiness isn’t a result of such highly specific ancestral experiences, which operate in the narrowest crevices of evolution.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 20, 2026

By comparing how these gene clusters are arranged across hundreds of plant genomes and tracing their patterns from ancestral species to modern plants, they were able to detect conserved elements that earlier methods had missed.

From Science Daily • Mar. 14, 2026

Similarly, the people who first domesticated wet-country crops of West Africa spoke languages ancestral to the modern Niger-Congo languages.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond