Not just old but old and cold?

Colin I. Smith (), Andrew T. Chamberlain, Michael S. Riley, Alan Cooper, Chris B. Stringer and Matthew J. Collins
Additional contact information
Colin I. Smith: Fossil Fuels and Environmental Geochemistry (Postgraduate Institute), NRG, Drummond Building, University of Newcastle
Andrew T. Chamberlain: University of Sheffield
Michael S. Riley: School of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham
Alan Cooper: University of Oxford
Chris B. Stringer: The Natural History Museum
Matthew J. Collins: Fossil Fuels and Environmental Geochemistry (Postgraduate Institute), NRG, Drummond Building, University of Newcastle

Nature, 2001, vol. 410, issue 6830, 771-772

Abstract: Abstract The successful retrieval of ancient DNA from two geographically dispersed Neanderthal skeletons1,2 has fuelled a demand for more Neanderthal DNA sequences for analysis. However, these exceptionally well-preserved specimens were geologically young and the mean annual temperature of their cave sites low, so the survival of this ancient DNA could have been due to unusually favourable conditions. Here we calculate the thermal history of a range of Holocene and Pleistocene bones whose DNA quality has been tested and find that in only very few sites with Neanderthal remains is the preservation of DNA likely to match the quality of that from the skeleton found at Mezmaiskaya Cave2. We recommend that any additional Neanderthal destined for destructive analysis should be carefully selected, taking into account its integrated thermal history.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35071177 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:410:y:2001:i:6830:d:10.1038_35071177

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35071177

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().