Wednesday 29 February 2012

Oetzi the Iceman's nuclear genome gives new insights

New clues have emerged in what could be described as the world's oldest murder case: that of Oetzi the "Iceman", whose 5,300-year-old body was discovered frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991. See the BBC news article.

The research team gathered information about Ötzi’s ancestry. His Y chromosome possesses mutations most commonly found among men from Sardinia and Corsica, and his nuclear genome puts his closest present-day relatives in the same area. Perhaps Ötzi’s kind once lived across Europe, before dying out or interbreeding with other groups everywhere except on those islands.

The full article published in Nature.com can be purchased here.

Supplementary technical information can be downloaded here.