alanw
Well-known member
DNA from soil could soon reveal who lived in ice age caves
The recovery of ancient DNA is no longer limited to bones.
theconversation.com
Caves can preserve tens of thousands of years of genetic history, providing ideal archives for studying long-term human–ecosystem interactions. The deposits beneath our feet become biological time capsules.
It is something we are exploring here at the Geogenomic Archaeology Campus Tübingen (GACT) in Germany. Analysing DNA from cave sediments allows us to reconstruct who lived in ice age Europe, how ecosystems changed and what role humans played. For example, did modern humans and Neanderthals overlap in the same caves? It’s also possible to obtain genetic material from faeces left in caves. At the moment we are analysing DNA from the droppings of a cave hyena that lived in Europe around 40,000 years ago.
