25 January 2014

DNA GENEALOGY BRINGS US TO THE SCIENCE OF DNA

DNA GENEALOGY is so fascinating.  It seems that every day the scientists are able to lead us to our genetic and ethnic heritage, though I've met more than one person who was surprised.  If we're going to trust that science, we're probably going to want to know more about it, and what information about HUMANITY AS A WHOLE IS BEING REVEALED.

IBTIMES : OLDEST DNA 400,000 YEARS OLD


"The bone, found in a cave in northern Spain known as the “Pit of Bones,” is the oldest human mitochondrial material ever sequenced. But rather than reveling in their discovery, scientists are getting frustrated.....

Svante Paabo, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Antrhopolgy in Leipzig, Germany, added that the results “show that we can now study DNA from human ancestors that are hundreds of thousands of years old," adding that the discovery was “tremendously exciting."

The reason scientists are flustered? Researchers were expecting to uncover DNA from a Neanderthal, which once inhabited Europe and parts of Asia. But the DNA actually turned out to be very similar to a different kind of prehistoric people, the Denisovans, who lived thousands of miles away in what is now Siberia. First discovered in 2010, the Denisovans were a genetically distinct group of people who are known only by a pinkie bone and a tooth..."