Archeologists have typically had to get their hands on skeletal remains to obtain the ancient DNA of a human, but a remarkable new study has managed t

Scientists Recover 15,000-Year-Old Human DNA Just From Dirt

submited by

Style Pass

2021-07-17 20:00:04

Archeologists have typically had to get their hands on skeletal remains to obtain the ancient DNA of a human, but a remarkable new study has managed to sequence the genome of a 15,000-year-old human – as well as a prehistoric wolf and bison – using just a handful of dirt.

Scientists have recovered genetic sequences from environmental sediments before , but this new study opens up the possibility of reconstructing the evolution of whole past ecosystems simply using dirt.

As reported in the journal Current Biology , the ancient sentiment was picked up from the cave of Satsurblia in the Caucasus, present-day western Georgia, known to be inhabited by humans in different periods of the Paleolithic. From a layer that dates back over a 25,000-year period, before the Ice Age, an international team of researchers led by the University of Vienna and Francis Crick Institute in London managed to obtain the DNA of a human.

Using extensive sequencing and vast banks of data, the researchers were able to discover that this DNA belonged to a woman of Eurasian ancestry who lived around 15,000 years ago. In fact, she appears to represent a human extinct lineage that contributed to the present-day West-Eurasian populations.