after death
DNA quickly degrades the tiny fragments
a hundred bases long three million times
smaller than when alive but then the
degradation slows down and it can
survive in this fragmented form for
thousands of years as long as the
conditions are right if you want to
recover ancient DNA hopefully you’ll
find a site where there’s limited
ability for oxygen and moisture to get
into the bone and further decompose it
and great extremes of temperature won’t
be occurring
in 1980 Croatian archaeologists
excavated Vindhya cave we found a mass
of boats among them an unremarkable
fragment known as v80 for some reason
this bone is packed with DNA
it contains more usable DNA than any
other Neanderthal bone has ever been
tested
the quite extraordinary rich content of
DNA in this bomb tell us that there was
some sort of special condition this cave
but what was critical for preservation
of DNA in this ball
perhaps the temperature was right the
humidity the soil but other bones in the
Vindhya cave have not yielded as much
DNA there’s something special about the
80 this fragment his shape may be a clue
it’s widely believed that the and
battles in this part of Europe practiced
cannibalism whether for food or for
ritual it was splitting bones and
defleshing them if v8 he was
cannibalized he may help explain why its
DNA was so well preserved stripped of
any organic material the bone would not
have attracted the same interest from
animals insects or microbes and his DNA
were not deteriorated so quickly
there are hundreds and hundreds of
rental bonds many of them have been
tested for Neanderthal DNA only this
ball could unlock its crates of
Neanderthal genome
DNA quickly degrades the tiny fragments
a hundred bases long three million times
smaller than when alive but then the
degradation slows down and it can
survive in this fragmented form for
thousands of years as long as the
conditions are right if you want to
recover ancient DNA hopefully you’ll
find a site where there’s limited
ability for oxygen and moisture to get
into the bone and further decompose it
and great extremes of temperature won’t
be occurring
in 1980 Croatian archaeologists
excavated Vindhya cave we found a mass
of boats among them an unremarkable
fragment known as v80 for some reason
this bone is packed with DNA
it contains more usable DNA than any
other Neanderthal bone has ever been
tested
the quite extraordinary rich content of
DNA in this bomb tell us that there was
some sort of special condition this cave
but what was critical for preservation
of DNA in this ball
perhaps the temperature was right the
humidity the soil but other bones in the
Vindhya cave have not yielded as much
DNA there’s something special about the
80 this fragment his shape may be a clue
it’s widely believed that the and
battles in this part of Europe practiced
cannibalism whether for food or for
ritual it was splitting bones and
defleshing them if v8 he was
cannibalized he may help explain why its
DNA was so well preserved stripped of
any organic material the bone would not
have attracted the same interest from
animals insects or microbes and his DNA
were not deteriorated so quickly
there are hundreds and hundreds of
rental bonds many of them have been
tested for Neanderthal DNA only this
ball could unlock its crates of
Neanderthal genome
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