Woman's DNA discovered in 20k year old deer-tooth pendant (2023)

Quirks and Quarks 7:32 20,000 deer-tooth pendant carries the DNA of the person who wore it Scientists have discovered a woman's DNA preserved in a 20,000 year old deer-tooth pendant. The artifact, which was discovered in 2019 in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, was analyzed by a German research team that developed advanced techniques for extracting and studying ancient DNA. "This was exactly what we were hoping for," said geneticist Elena Essel, a member of the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "It was clear that a human handled it and also potentially was wearing it, so we actually were hoping that ... the maker or user or wearer of this artifact left some of his or her DNA on this pendant." The group's work was published this week in the journal Nature . The pendant was discovered in Denisova cave, which has been a rich source of archeological finds about early humans in Eurasia for decades. The cool and dry conditions in the ca ... Read full article.