SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Fifty thousand years ago, a Neandertal relieved himself in a cave in present-day Belgium, depositing, among other things, a sample of his DNA. The urine clung to minerals in the soil and the faeces eventually decomposed. But traces of the DNA remained, embedded in the cave floor, where earth falling from the cave's ceiling and blowing in from outside eventually entombed it. Now, researchers have shown they can find and identify such genetic traces of both Neandertals and Denisovans, another type of archaic human, enabling them to test for the presence of ancient humans even in sites where no bones have been found.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Neanderthal DNA Recovered from Cave Soil
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 11 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.
-- R. Geis
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @10:57AM (2 children)
Everybody knows modern (ahem *ancient*) humans were all a bunch of inbred raving shit eaters who worked 80 hour weeks and never produced anything!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday April 28 2017, @11:02AM
... well they did produce something. It just took fifty thousand years for it to have some kind of value.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday April 28 2017, @02:48PM
Belgium, and the rest of Europe, are still being overrun by a bunch of inbred savages relieving themselves and depositing their DNA all over Europe.