Oldest DNA Recovered From 7,000-Year-Old Skeletons In Spain 146
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.'"
Re:Oldest human dna (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it's not the oldest DNA, but on further study, that plant example is thought to be bacterial contamination [royalsocie...ishing.org] [PDF]. The oldest-known current examples are things like extinct mammoths and mastodons that are much younger than 20 million years.
Misquote in article (Score:4, Interesting)
“These are the oldest partial genomes from modern human prehistory,” said researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogeneticist at the Spanish National Research Council.
He qualifies it with "modern human", which makes sense for a 7000 year old skeleton.