Today on NPR's Science Friday, They talked about new DNA research in the 5,000 year old "Iceman" that was found in the Alps in 1991.
"When Tyrolean Iceman was defrosted in 2000, researchers took some DNA from his intestines and sequenced it. But that was only his nuclear DNA, inherited from both parents, and it revealed that he was related to a large group of Europeans who share a common ancestor. The new study, which will be published November 11 in Current Biology, allowed researchers to examine the mummy's lineage in more detail. And that's when they realized how different he was from modern populations."
Said Franco Rollo, a co-author of the study:
We have obtained evidence of a significant genetic difference between present-day Europeans and a representative prehistoric human—despite the fact that the Iceman is not so old—just about 5,000 years. This doesn't simply mean that Ötzi had some 'personal' mutations making him different from the others but that, in the past, there was a group—a branch of the phylogenetic tree—of men and women sharing the same mitochondrial DNA. Apparently, this genetic group is no longer present. We don't know whether it is extinct or it has become extremely rare.
What this reveals is that even large groups of genetically similar people can completely disappear from the gene pool in a relatively short time
Study of the ancient man will continue, and as technology progresses, we will learn more about this Iceman.
1 comment:
interesting. do you think they will ever piece together the entire history of man? seems very doubtful to me. but still very interesting.
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