Oldest Intact Red Blood Cells Found on Iceman

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Oldest Intact Red Blood Cells Found on Iceman

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday May 2, 2012 @04:21AM from the next-on-discovery-cloning-the-iceman dept.

sciencehabit writes "A team of researchers has zoomed in on two spots on the body of the Iceman, a mummified, 5300-year-old hunter found frozen in the Alps in 1991: a shoulder wound found with an embedded arrowhead and a hand lesion resembling a stab wound. The scientists used atomic force microscopy, a visualization method with resolution of less than a nanometer, to scan the wounds for blood residue. They discovered red blood cells — the oldest in the world to be found intact — as well as fibrin, a protein needed for blood to clot. The presence of fibrin indicates that the Iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, didn't die immediately after being wounded."

18 of 104 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by crazyjj · 2012-05-02 04:21 · Score: 3, Funny

Scan reveal Ötzi asshole who no respected bro?

--
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
1. Re:Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by gestalt_n_pepper · 2012-05-02 04:29 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Off our meds today, are we?
  
  --
  Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
2. Re:Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by Fned · 2012-05-02 06:04 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Yes, it does, really. They researched this. Humans are the only mammal with a glans shaped like ours, and in simulations it proved to be dramatically more effective at removing recently deposited semen than the glansless penii of other primates.
3. Re:Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by nedlohs · 2012-05-02 06:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sure it has. And there are lots of parts that we have copies of that are more than a few hundred years old. So how is that relevant in the slightest.
  If you have some strange irrational fear of the bible as a set of documents then we have a bunch of records from China related to marriage significantly older than a few hundred years.
  Confucius talked about it a lot, for example. Or is that all edited by the illuminai in your paranoid world?
4. Re:Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by mcgrew · 2012-05-02 06:28 · Score: 2
  
  A link to Amazon.com is useless as a citation here, so do you mind explaining how they could possibly know the sex habits of people who all died before the invention of writing?
  BTW, the book you linked was written by a psychologist, not a paleontologist. So the guy has no more credibility in that field than you do. Sorry, but your citation is even worse than at first glance.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
5. Re:Ötzi no bang Utz's wife again! by Chris+Burke · 2012-05-02 07:46 · Score: 2
  
  Today was No Meds Day and nobody told me?!
  
  --
  
  The enemies of Democracy are
Excellent! by DWMorse · 2012-05-02 04:26 · Score: 4, Funny

Now we can clone this caveman creature, on a private island, with a theme park tourist-attraction setting! Spare no expense, of course!

--
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
1. Re:Excellent! by Tyr07 · 2012-05-02 04:40 · Score: 2
  
  The power went out! The electric fences containing the cavemen are down!
2. Re:Excellent! by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2012-05-02 04:57 · Score: 2
  
  Oh my God. Do you know what this is? This is a caveman egg. The cavemen are breeding.
3. Re:Excellent! by Jeng · 2012-05-02 04:59 · Score: 2
  
  Not the movie reference I was expecting, I was expecting something more like this one.
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087452/
  
  --
  Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Re:Don't get all that excited.... by aardwolf64 · 2012-05-02 04:38 · Score: 4, Funny

It's groundbreaking! Scientists have proved that people 5000 years ago had blood! Expect it to be in the newspaper headlines tomorrow morning...
Iceman? by bhcompy · 2012-05-02 04:44 · Score: 3, Funny

Iceman isn't dead. Goose is.
Re:Now you know what to do... by Norwell+Bob · 2012-05-02 04:45 · Score: 4, Funny

Allow me to... [sunglasses]
Spearhead this one.
Re:Don't get all that excited.... by Guppy · 2012-05-02 04:47 · Score: 2

So, I'm missing the point (so to speak) of this. Does forensic science care if you can find evidence of blood in a 5000 year old really, really cold case? Does this help in more contemporary case work? I'd be more impressed if they could pull off specific biochemical markers off the red cells - like blood types or similar markers.
Already been done, Otzi was Type-O, Rh+:
http://www.science-fare.com/article/%C3%B6tzis-entire-genome-sequenced-first-time
Most interesting part to me was the finding that he had Lyme Disease (or something very closely related to Lyme).
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS LARRY! by bmo · 2012-05-02 04:59 · Score: 4, Funny

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS!
--
BMO
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING
Re:Don't get all that excited.... by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2012-05-02 05:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Its a unique glimpse into a long vanished way of life and people, an ancient culture of which very little if anything survives today. Some of us find every little detail to be quite fascinating, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to put a few more pieces together and build a more complete picture of our ancestors.
Re:Don't get all that excited.... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-02 05:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

You're not wrong -- you're just not completely right.
Otzi's blood type is old news -- I wrote the story you sourced.
But, since its publication, it's been advanced -- they actually found blood cells, not DNA telling us what kind of blood cells they'd be.
I'm just waiting to interview Dr. Zink and I'll put a relevant story up on the site!
didn't die immediately after being wounded." by mapkinase · 2012-05-02 06:47 · Score: 2

>didn't die immediately after being wounded."
>a shoulder wound found ..and that implies that the shoulder of our ancestor did not have vital organs, like heart or brain.

--
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.