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Oldest DNA Recovered From 7,000-Year-Old Skeletons In Spain
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers published a paper in the current issue of Current Biology detailing their analysis of DNA from 7,000-year old cavemen in northern Spain. From the article: 'The bones of the two young adult males were found in a cave in the Cantabarian mountain range in 2006 by a handful of explorers, 4,920 feet above sea level. The cold atmosphere is what preserved the DNA in the remains of the two bodies. The cavemen lived during the Mesolithic period and were hunter-gatherers, as determined by an ornament one of the skeletons was holding. They have named the two skeletons Braña1 and Braña2 after the Braña-Arintero site in which they were discovered. They were in near-perfect condition.'"
It's not the oldest dna, but the oldest human DNA that they've found. This site reports DNA extracted from a 20 million year magnolia leaf.
As far as I can remember, these studies on Neanderthal used mitochondrial DNA (i.e., the DNA stored in the mitochondria, which is separate from the one in the nucleus) rather than genomic (i.e. the DNA in the nucleus of the cell).
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
No time soon. Despite earlier signs, there has been no legitimate DNA recovery from the Mesozoic, the time of the dinosaurs. All the earlier discoveries from amber of that age have turned out to be bogus, as have claims of obtaining DNA from dinosaur bone (it was contamination). In fact, the story is the same for most younger examples too. The oldest legitimate DNA is no more than a few tens of thousands of years old, and very fragmentary. So, we may get information from mammoths, moas, and giant sloths of the Pleistocene, but apparently nothing from extinct dinosaurs. Check this paper [PDF] and this one [PDF] for short reviews, and this one for a longer review.
Yeah I could not find out what the ornament was.
It was a medallion that said "Member of the Hunter-Gatherer Club of Braña-Arintero". How much more proof do you need?
It's hard to tell from the article, but I got the impression these two were carefully buried in the cave by other humans. Articles that are buried along with a body tell a lot about the culture. These ornaments depict red deer, which they very likely hunted.
The sad thing is, most Americans actually believe that.
Excellent TED talk on this. Jack Horner's team is taking a novel...somewhat terrifying approach since there's no DNA available, but he spends a LOT of time talking about trying to get some viable DNA from various sources:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken.html