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

That heritage gave both him and the backcountry settlers he epitomized their combative sense of equality and dignity—rooted in the history of British impositions on their ancestral lands in Ulster.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026

Their loved one's ashes are placed inside and the space turned into an ancestral shrine.

From BBC • Mar. 31, 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

When ancestral Polynesians spread into the Pacific around 3,200 years ago, they encountered islands differing greatly in their environments.

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