Sifting through teaspoons of clay and sand scraped from the floors of caves, German researchers have managed to isolate ancient human DNA — without turning up a single bone. Their new technique, described in a study published on Thursday in the journal. Sifting through teaspoons of clay and sand scraped from the floors of caves, German researchers have managed to isolate ancient human DNA — without turning up a single bone.
It’s a bit like discovering that you can extract gold dust from the air,” said Adam Siepel, a population geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
An absolutely amazing and exciting paper,” added David Reich, a genetics professor. Harvard who focuses on ancient DNA. Until recently, the only way to study the genes of ancient humans like the Neanderthals and their cousins, the Denisovans, was to recover DNA from fossil bones.
But they are scarce and hard to find, which has greatly limited research into where early humans lived and how widely they ranged. The only Denisovan bones and teeth that scientists have, for example, come from a single cave in Siberia.