Daily Archives: February 7, 2022

Claire Hough was nearing her 15th birthday when she traveled from Rhode Island to San Diego to visit her grandparents. She never got to blow out any candles. Somebody killed her first.

Her murder in August of 1984 became one of the countys most troubling unsolved homicides, brutal in its details and frightening in its location: scenic Torrey Pines State Beach, visited by thousands of people annually.

As the years went by, San Diego police cold-case detectives revisited the slaying from time to time, looking through the files for missed clues and asking criminalists if there was some new way to extract DNA from the evidence.

It turned out there was.

What happened next is the stuff of Hollywood movies, mystery novels and true-crime podcasts at long last an answer to the question of what happened to Claire Hough. A triumph, it seemed, of tenacity and technology.

But the DNA results became more complicated than that, and more tragic.

See more here:
A cold case. A DNA hit. And finally justice. Or was it? - The San Diego Union-Tribune

It wasnt perfect, but fast-paced event shows potential on a packed afternoon in Glasgow

At a time when athletics is having to work hard to reach new audiences and maintain its relevance, innovations such as the Dynamic New Athletics (DNA) meeting which took place in Glasgow on Saturday (February 5) are to be applauded.

First launched at the 2019 European Games in Minsk, the fast-paced and compact format which is the brainchild of European Athletics saw its second coming at the Emirates Arena and although it didnt entirely hit the mark in every aspect, this pilot is showing potential.

Spain were the outright winners of the six-way international battle which also included second-placed England and third-placed Ireland, as well as Wales, Portugal and Scotland.

The hosts had been due to field Olympic 1500m silver medallist Laura Muir among their ranks, but her late withdrawal through injury was a clear blow to the aim of raising the events profile. It goes without saying that more star names in future would be a huge help.

Yet athletics is well supported on and off the track in Scotland and there was still a crowd of around 2000 in attendance to watch the action unfold.

There were 10 events across track and field which all brought points. First place got 12, second 10, third eight, fourth six, fifth four and two for sixth.These points all decided the handicap and the running order for the 11th and final event of the day the Hunt the winner of which would take all.

Spain were the dominant force right from the off, winning the mixed 4x400m relay from England, and some of the track events translated particularly well.

The field events were a little more difficult to follow, however, with head-to-head clashes an interesting idea but the format needing just a little bit too much explanation.

Yet the athletes seemed to enjoy themselves. Olympian Scott Lincoln took full points in his shot put battle for first place with Spains Carlos Tobalina, the Englishman being the only competitor to clear 20m as he threw 20.13m to secure victory. As with a number of the other events, tactics came into play.

Scott Lincoln (Mark Shearman)

Going into it, I was thinking more selfishly [looking to throw as far as possible], said Lincoln. But as soon as you get in the circle, it completely changes in your mind and you just think about getting the safe throw out there to win the points.

Of the format, he added: It was really exciting. It was bizarre to have the whole crowd watching a throws event. It was really good in that respect and all the other field events got the same showcase as the track did.

One of the loudest cheers of the day came for a more traditional discipline, the 800m, as Scotlands Jenny Selman enjoyed a day to remember. Just prior to the DNA meeting getting underway, she had run her way to an 800m World Indoor Championships and Commonwealth qualifying time with a personal best of 2:00.72.

She had been due to run in the Hunt but the withdrawal of Muir resulted in a rejig of her duties for the day and just 70 minutes later Selman found herself on the startline again.

Her performance raised the roof as she chased down and pipped Irelands Louise Shanahan right on the line. Selman clocked 2:04.73 ahead of Shanahans 2:04.82.

A change to her training group in Edinburgh is now paying dividends for Selman and she said: The 800m is such a tough event. I realise that even though Ive got the qualifying standard it doesnt necessarily mean Im going to go. Im just happy to have got that time to put that marker down and put myself in the mix. If I go, that would be amazing but, if not, Im still really happy.

Its really good to have an international opportunity [like this]. When I was coming down the home straight it felt like everyone was roaring at me, which really helps.

Jenny Selman (Mark Shearman)

One of the events which truly fitted the fast-paced, high-octane mission of this meeting was the 2x2x200m relay. Teams of two athletes one male and one female alternated legs of 200m, with each running two. The English duo of Thomas Somers and Amy Hillyard hit their stride with the format best, storming to victory in 1:39.71, ahead of Spain (1:41.50) and Scotland (1:42.40).

The twist with the mens high jump was that athletes and coaches combined to choose the height they attempted in the head-to-head clashes, with the highest successful jump (just one attempt for each athlete) winning each contest.

If neither athlete cleared their chosen bar, the points were shared. And so it was that Irelands Ciaran Connolly and Spaniard Xesc Tresens both scored 11 points for their respective teams in the jump-off for first and second place.Connolly, who cleared 2.05m in the qualifying rounds, failed to go over 2.06m in the final, while Tresens missed his shot at 2.10m.

In the womens 60m, Maria Isabel Prez of Spain took full points in a winning time of 7.22, from Irelands Molly Scott (7.33) and Scotlands Alisha Rees (7.36). The mens contest saw British indoor champion Andrew Robertson grab victory for England in 6.62 from Welshman Jeremiah Azu (6.64) and Irelands Israel Olatunde (6.68).

Portugals Evelise Veiga took the womens long jump with her leap of 6.50m, some 35cm further than Welsh runner-up Rebecca Chapmans 6.15m. Ruby Millet of Ireland produced a PB of 6.40m for third.

Enrique Llopis won the mens 60m hurdles in 7.67 ahead of a seasons best 7.82 from Portugals Joo Vitor De Oliveira and Englands Cameron Fillerys clocking of 7.91.The womens race also went to Spain thanks to Teresa Errandoneas run of 8.22, which brought her home ahead of personal bests from Irelands Kate Doherty (8.25) and Portugals Catarina Querios (8.39).

All of this left Spain with a healthy 20-point lead going into the Hunt. This translated into an advantage of 6.70 seconds before their nearest challengers, Ireland and England, could set off in pursuit.

The mixed relay format of the race began with a female 800m leg handing over to a mens 600m, then a womens 400m and mens 200m. The format would work much better with a closer handicap contest but Spain got the job done well andtheir winning time of 4:38.46 brought them home almost 11 seconds clear of England.

The Spaniards definitely enjoyed their celebrations and there was plenty of buzz with an infield packed full of athletes cheering their team-mates. Now it remains to be seen how much noise DNA can make in the future.

Click here for event results.

New year special offer get your first issue of AW magazine for just 1!

Go here to read the rest:
Spain lead the way to win DNA - AW - Athletics Weekly

They found the body, floating face down and decaying, in Buffalo Bayou. It belonged to a short and slim man with dark hair, likely in his 20s or 30s.

When authorities fished the corpse out of the water, it was dressed in khaki pants, a striped shirt, a belt with a cowboy buckle. And two combs, in his pocket.

Almost 65 years later, Harris County medical examiners still have no idea who he is. The man the oldest unnamed corpse in the countys custody is one of hundreds of people who have died in Houston and have never been identified.

More sophisticated techniques that combine DNA and genealogy are now available and are helping those who seek to put names to unidentified bodies, just as they are being used more by police across the U.S. to solve cold cases.

But every year, hundreds of unidentified bodies arrive at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, and despite best efforts, some never get named.

The morgue handles cases of unexpected or unexplained death. That includes homicides (intentional or unintentional) and cases where a person died under suspicious circumstances. It also includes people who die shortly after arriving at a hospital or after being seen by a physician, as well as suicides and children younger than 6. Finally, bodies discovered are handled by the morgue.

Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

In 2021, 437 people came into the medical examiners lab as unidentified persons, according to data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle.

When investigators arrive at a crime scene or take on a new case, their first job is to try to identify the victim. They look for drivers licenses, take witness statements, and look for other clues.

Most decedents are identified within a few weeks, Institute of Forensic Sciences spokeswoman Michele Arnold said.

But many times, those efforts dont pan out. Fiery car crashes leave bodies burnt beyond recognition. Corpses abandoned or thrown into rivers decay until they are unrecognizable. Thieves take wallets, purses, phones and other items that might otherwise provide clues for detectives.

When that happens, the body is fingerprinted and run through the system, Arnold said. Forensic investigators examine dental records, skeletal radiographs, and use DNA analyses to try to identify the deceased, she said.

On its website, the center has a page with photographs of unidentified people, distinguishing marks on their bodies (such as a striking butterfly tattoo in one photo) and personal effects a slim silver watch, an Astros T-shirt, a bulky pocketknife, a shoe with blue laces and red ornamentation on the toe. Along with a warning about viewer discretion, the page says: These images are provided in hopes of identifying the deceased individuals, returning them to their loved ones, and bringing closure to families.

By the end of 2021, most of the 437 bodies that arrived at the county morgue that year were identified. Eight were not. They joined a list dating back to 1950 of more than 300 other people who remain unnamed in Harris County.

When investigators are unable to identify a corpse it is labeled long-term unidentified and the body is transferred to county burial.

In Harris County, unidentified men were found far more frequently than unidentified women.

More than a quarter of the unidentified remains at the morgue were later discovered to be in their 30s. About a fifth were in their 20s.

Among the dead found over the years was a young woman the best guess investigators can make is that she was between 20 and 35 whose body was discovered just north of 610 on Woodard in late 2020. The corpse, which appeared to have lain there for months to years, showed signs of extensive tooth decay before death.

Then there was the teen, found on Walters Road in 2012: a girl between the ages of 15 and 17. Shed been dead for three to six weeks when people finally discovered her body, lying about 20 feet from the side of Walters Road. Records from the medical examiners office show she was between 4 foot 7 inches and 5 feet 3 inches tall. Investigators noted that she appeared to be bi-racial, with long, wavy/curly dark hair held back from the face with a standard bobby pin. She had a pronounced overbite, and small dental fillings in three lower molars. When she died, she was wearing a blue and green Smurfette T-shirt, cargo pants, a black bra and pink underwear.

In 2021, seven children under the ages of 15 were brought in as unidentified bodies. Two died from injuries related to motor vehicle accidents. Three died by homicide. One investigation outlines a homeless 13-year-old boy who drowned in early August. A stillborn baby was found in a dumpster. Police still do not know the identity of the childs parents.

When someone goes missing, it leads to anguish for loved ones: worry and grief and the question of whatever happened to them.

Jo Ann Lowitzer last spoke to her daughter, Ali, 11 years ago. Ali, 16, wanted to walk to work after riding the bus home from school, Lowitzer recalled. Three people saw her ride the bus and turn down the street toward her workplace on a late April day in 2010. That was the last time anyone ever saw her, Lowitzer recalled. Because her daughter liked dark clothes and eyeliner, police at first wondered if she was a runaway, she said.

Frantic days turned into months, and then years.

At first, Lowitzer didnt want to even consider the worst.

Its even hard to think about today, she said. I would hope that shes not a Jane Doe somewhere.

As the years have passed, its become harder to ignore that possibility, she said. Like thousands of other relatives of missing people, shes submitted her genetic material to databases, hoping for some kind of closure.

If she is out there, and I found her by submitting our DNA, at least I would have that, Lowitzer said.

In past years, medical examiners have obtained grants allowing them to perform advanced genetic testing on some of the remains. Such was the case in 2011, when they exhumed about 25 bodies, including those of a young couple whose remains were discovered in north Harris County more than 40 years ago. But even those efforts can take years or longer to pan out. It wasnt until late last year, with the help of genealogy testing, that investigators identified the young couple as Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Gail Linn, who from Florida and went missing in late 1980.

Over the past decade, investigators have increasingly turned to genealogy testing to help resolve cases, said Carol Schweitzer, with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The method has helped detectives identify dozens of murder victims and killers, the most famous of whom was perhaps the Golden State Killer, a former police officer who murdered at least 13 people and raped 50 women between 1973 and 1986.

In Baltimore, authorities used the technique to identify a homicide victim from 1975, Schweitzer said.

Authorities continuously worked on that case for decades, never putting it down, yet genealogy came along and produced the tip authorities had been waiting on for 45 years, Schweitzer said.

Genealogy could also play a critical role helping track down children who went missing decades ago, she said.

A missing infant who was abducted to be raised by their abductor, or a child abducted by their non-custodial family member and taken to another country could be resolved with a lead generated by genealogy efforts, she said.

Traditionally, investigators used short tandem repeat analysis (or STR) testing to connect DNA samples with potential perpetrators. The DNA method allows scientists to analyze small strands of DNA to see if they match those of a specific person.

In 1998 the federal government created CODIS (the Combined DNA Index System), a federal database of DNA collected at crime scenes and from criminal suspects, potentially allowing investigators from all across the country to see if DNA found at crime scenes matched that of samples collected elsewhere.

It was a monumental shift in criminal investigations, said David Mittelman, CEO of Othram Inc, a DNA testing lab focused on forensic genealogy testing.

But a fundamental problem with CODIS and STR testing was that detectives could only connect it against samples already in the CODIS database.

If youre a victim, youre not in CODIS, Mittelman said. So CODIS doesnt help. It doesnt work.

Now, investigators can use more advanced DNA testing to analyze far more DNA markers and then compare those DNA samples against those added to certain genealogy databases such as Gedmatch.com.

Advancements in DNA testing have also helped bring an end to cases that have remained opened for decades.

Take the case of Mary Catherine Edwards. Murdered in 1995, the young Beaumont schoolteachers case sat, unsolved, for 25 years. Late last year, after advanced DNA testing, investigators were able to identify the genetic material of a possible perpetrator. They then used forensic genealogy testing to identify his relatives, then work down the family tree until they found the alleged perpetrator. Hes now arrested and charged with Edwards murder.

Detectives are increasingly able to solve murders like Edwards, Mittelman said.

Were able to do lots of things including use genealogy to make long range relationship determinations, Mittelman said. With that information, detectives are now increasingly able to connect once-useless DNA with relatives of crime victims or perpetrators of violence.

In Harris County, however, hundreds of corpses lie in a paupers graveyard, waiting to be named.

st.john.smith@chron.com

More:
DNA testing puts cold cases in the spotlight. But in Houston, hundreds of the dead remain unidentified. - Houston Chronicle

Nearly 30 years ago on April 26, 1992, the body of 26-year-old Ronald Sam Rogers was found next to his red 1985 Chevrolet Camaro at the end of a cul-de-sac at an industrial park in Duncan.

Theplace was known as a "lover's lane."He died of a single gunshot wound behind his left ear, shot at close range by a small-caliber gun, former Spartanburg County Coroner Jim Burnett told the Greenville News at that time.

To this day, the motive remains a mystery and the murder of Rogers remains among46 unsolved homicides dating back decades in Spartanburg Countythat investigators hope to solve with a renewed determination. There is hope now to solve the case because ofrefined DNA analysis technology that was only in its infancy when the crime occurred, Sheriff's Office Investigator Diane Lestage said Wednesday.

She said some evidence in the Rogers case has been sent to the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) for DNA analysis, in hopes of identifying a suspect.

"I do depend a lot on tips from people, especially if they knew or wererelated to the victim," she said. "(In the Rogers case) I still get tips and references."

In 1992, no one knew who would want to kill a young man with so much promise, who "didn't have an enemy in the world," his father Norman Rogers told a Greenville News reporter after the killing. Norman Rogers, who is now deceased, lived across the street from his son at the time of the crime

Ronald Sam Rogers grew up in Oconee County, his sister Ginger Porter told the Herald-Journal in 2013. His mother, Carole Moss, also told the Herald-Journal that Rogers graduated from Tamassee-Salem High School, then moved to Atlanta and enrolled at DeVry Institute.

Rogers then moved back and was attending classes at Greenville Technical College. He had moved into a mobile home onCherry Creek Lane in Wellford and held a job at Digital Equipment Corporation in Greenville.He lived less than 2 miles from where his body was found.

Reward offered: Spartanburg family offers $10k reward to help solve triple homicide in Clifton community

Moss told the Herald-Journal that investigators found no one who held a "grudge" against her son or had a motive to kill him.

Efforts this past week to reach his sister and mother were unsuccessful.

Sometime late Friday night, April 24, 1992, Rogers left two steaks thawing in the kitchen sink and two pieces of cake in the refrigerator of his home, the Herald-Journal reported in 2013.

All of his bills were ready to mail and a notebook listed all his expenses. Investigators never found his journal or the backpack that he always carried, the newspaper reported.

His body was discovered early in the morning of April 26, 1992, at the end of the cul-de-sac in the Hillside Park of Commerce, an industrial park on Highway 290 in Duncan.

16-year-old case: Cold case: Mid-December double-homicide near Woodruff remains unsolved 16 years later

Sheriff's investigator Alan Wood told the Herald-Journalin 2013 the cul-de-sac at the time of the crime was known as a lover's lane, where underage kids went to drink and people used drugs.

Rogers was last seen talking with an unidentified man at a Dairy Queen that used to be at Truck Stops of America at Highway 290 and Interstate 85, Wood said in the 2013 Herald-Journal article.

Because a few unidentified items were taken, Wood said robbery could have been a motive. Because he was found nude, there may have been a sexual encounter, Wood said.

2007 murder unsolved: Sheriff's Office: Reward being offered to help solve 2007 murder of Boiling Springs woman

In 1992, Sheriff's Office spokesman Mike Little told the Greenville News that deputies discovered a pair of designer swimming trunks about 17 feet in front of Rogersvehicle.

Except for his socks and shoes, Rogers was unclothed, Little said.

Whoever killed Rogers left forensic evidence that was tested shortly after Rogers' death, the Herald-Journal reported in November 2013.

Investigators chased some 80 leads before the case reached a dead-end, according to a 2013 Herald-Journal article.

Lestage said anyone with information about the cold case can contact her at 864-503-4556, or by email at dlestage@spartanburgcounty.org.

Contact Bob Montgomery at bob.montgomery@shj.com

More:
SLED analyzing DNA in new effort to solve 30-year-old Spartanburg County homicide - Spartanburg Herald Journal

DNA evidence collected from the rape of a 76-year-old woman in Indianapolis last September has led to the same suspect being charged for a 2019 sexual assault of a Bloomington woman.

Tre Shawn David Bowling, 23, of Indianapolis, is charged with four counts of felony rape, kidnapping with serious injury and strangulation in the Bloomington case from April 29, 2019. Two of the rape charges are Level 1 felonies, the most serious category of offense other than murder in Indiana.

Monroe Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff set a $500,000 bond in the case. An initial court hearing hadnot been scheduled as of Wednesday.

Another assault: Man accused of raping intoxicated Indiana University student at dorm

About 11:30 that spring night, a 26-year-old woman who had been walking home was raped in the stairwell of an apartment building near East Second and South Grant streets downtown.

She told a detective she had worked out at a gym on East Seventh Street, walked to the CVS on Kirkwood Avenue and was almost home to her apartment when she was ambushed in the stairwell.

The victim said a man she didn't know dressed in black had been following her. When she reached the stairway, he grabbed her from behind and choked her until she was unconscious. She said when she awoke, the man raped her, then ran from the scene.

A rape examination was completed at IU Health Bloomington Hospital. DNA evidence was submitted to the Indiana State Police lab for comparison to samples in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System database, but at the time there wasn't a CODIS match to identify a suspect.

Bad weather on way: Up to 8 inches of snow with freezing rain, sleet from winter storm

That changed after the September 2021 rape in Indianapolis. In that case, a 76-year-old woman taking a walk was attacked and raped, and theman who ran from the scene was identified as Bowling.

Bowling was arrested and charged with felony rape, and a sample of his DNA was added to the CODIS database. An April 11 trial is scheduled in that case.

Then on Jan. 22 of this year, the BloomingtonPolice Department got word that Bowling's DNA matched the sample collected after the 2019 Bloomington rape.

BPD investigators interviewed Bowling at the Marion County Jail and then charged him in the local case.

In April 2019, less than two weeks before the sexual assault in Bloomington, Bowling was charged in Monroe Circuit Court with criminal trespass; a judge dismissed the case three months later. He also was charged with criminal trespass in February 2019, but that case was dismissed as well.

BPD Chief Michael Diekhoff called Bowling "a very dangerous man," and said in a news release he hopes the arrest gives victims "some relief knowing that the suspect is no longer walking free.

Contact reporterLaura Lane at llane@heraldt.com, 812-331-4362 or 812-318-5967.

See more here:
DNA from Indy rape case identifies suspect in 2019 Bloomington sexual assault - The Herald-Times

Tobi Kirschmann describes learning of the Golden State Killer's identity as a "gut punch."

She was thrilled the serial killer and rapist had been caught, but because she worked as a DNA analyst for the California DNA Databank, she was disappointed neither she nor the hundreds of detectives who worked on the case could've found Joseph James D'Angelo Jr. sooner.

It was DNA that broke the case, but by comparing the killer's DNA to samples in a databank. Those samples were from known criminals, and D'Angelo had never been arrested before so his DNA wasn't there. It was DNA from D'Angelo's family tree that led police to the killer. D'Angelo was arrested in 2018 and pleaded guilty to various crimes in 2020. It was the first high-profile case where genetic genealogy the same thing behind familial searches led by Ancestry or 23andMe was used to solve a crime.

Kirschmann worked at the DNA databank for 10 years before moving to Saratoga Springs, where she was living when D'Angelo was arrested. She worked at the Forensic Investigation Center in Albany, where all the evidence in criminal investigations by the State Police is processed. Once it was revealed the Golden State Killer case was solved using familial search, she knew it would change how crimes and missing-person cases where DNA was collected were investigated, forever.

"All unsolved crimes with DNA can be solved in hours, not months or years," Kirschmann said.

She left the state lab to start her own business, DNA Investigations. Once the DNA is sequenced, Kirschmann's job begins. Law enforcement and other agencies bring DNA reports to Kirschmann, who then checks databases and builds a family tree in an attempt to find a match to the sample.

She soon found the path to solving crimes through genetic research wasn't clear. A web of laws prevented familial searches. Until April of last year, the state didn't allow police to compare DNA from an unidentified body to samples in state and federal databases of potential relatives. At the beginning of 2022, Bethlehem police revealed the identity of remains found 41 years ago made possible by genetic research. The FBI took on the case in 2020 and found a match to two elderly relatives, allowing police to announce the remains found all those years ago belonged to Franklin Feldman, although how Feldman ended up in Bethlehem and how he died is still a mystery.

Kirschmann expects more cases like Feldman's to be solved.

"All the laws are in place, we're just waiting on someone to try it," she said.

Genetic genealogy may also be used in at least other Capital Region cold case: the killing of Sheila Shepherd in 1980 in Saratoga Springs. Investigators are going back over evidence gathered at the scene in hopes of extracting DNA from someone who could've been Shepherd's attacker. Kirschmann said it is possible to find viable DNA in clothing even as old as it is.

In the meantime, Kirschmann has been working with adoptees looking for their biological relatives and speaking to law enforcement groups. It was at a training that Don Carola, newly retired from the Office of Information Technology Services where he worked in the criminal justice department for 20 years. Carola was already fascinated by genealogy, having tracked his family back 400 years. Carola works part-time for the Stillwater Police, bringing new technology online for the department.

"I said to my chief, 'This is coming,' and it's going to change criminal investigations. If criminals leave DNA, they're not getting away," Carola said.

He wrote to Kirschmann and volunteered as an intern. Kirschmann included Carola in her LEAD group: Law Enforcement Assistance with DNA Services.

While waiting for the technology to pick up speed, Kirschmann is applying for grants that she can use to help people prepare their samples for analysis. As it stands, DNA goes to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System where it is checked against existing samples. CODIS has 90 days to process it if there's no hit, Kirschmann said, it's time to start a genealogy search.

Link:
Spa City business using genetics, genealogy to solve crimes - Times Union

By Tyler J. Murchie, McMaster UniversityJanuary 31, 2022

Genetic material found in permafrost sediments from the Yukon contains rich information about ancient ecosystems. Credit: Julius Csotonyi/Government of Yukon

In 2010, small cores of permafrost sediments were collected by a team at the University of Alberta from gold mines in the Klondike region of central Yukon. They had remained in cold storage until paleogeneticists at the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre applied new genomics techniques to better understand the global extinction of megafauna that had culminated in North America some 12,700 years ago.

These tiny sediment samples contain an immense wealth of ancient environmental DNA from innumerable plants and animals that lived in those environments over millennia. These genetic microfossils originate from all components of an ecosystem including bacteria, fungi, plants and animals and serve as a time capsule of long-lost ecosystems, such as the mammoth-steppe, which disappeared around 13,000 years ago.

How exactly these ecosystems restructured so significantly, and why large animals seem to have been the most impacted by this shift has been an active area of scientific debate since the 18th century.

We can now use environmental DNA to help fill the gaps that have driven this debate.

Artists illustration of woolly mammoths.

Bacterial, fungal and unidentifiable DNA make up over 99.99 percent of an environmental sample. In our case, we wanted a way to selectively recover the much smaller fraction of ancient plant and animal DNA that would help us better understand the collapse of the mammoth-steppe ecosystem.

For my doctoral research, I was part of a team that developed a a new technique to extract, isolate, sequence and identify tiny fragments of ancient DNA from sediment.

We analyzed these DNA fragments to track the shifting cast of plants and animals that lived in central Yukon over the past 30,000 years. We found evidence for the late survival of woolly mammoths and horses in the Klondike region, some 3,000 years later than expected.

We then expanded our analysis to include 21 previously collected permafrost cores from four sites in the Klondike region that date between 4,000 to 30,000 years ago.

With current technologies, we not only could identify which organisms a set of genetic microfossils came from. But we were also able to reassemble those fragments into genomes to study their evolutionary histories solely from sediment.

Synthesis of dated bones, ancient environmental DNA and archaeological sites in Yukon and Alaska. Credit: Tyler J. Murchie

The Pleistocene-Holocene transition, which occurred about 11,700 years ago, was a period of tremendous change across the globe. In eastern Beringia (the former Eurasian land bridge and unglaciated regions of Yukon and Alaska), this period saw the collapse of the mammoth-steppe biome and its gradual replacement with the boreal forest as we know it today.

This brought about the loss of iconic ice age megaherbivores like the woolly mammoth, Yukon horse, and steppe bison, along with predators such as the American scimitar cat and Beringian lion, among many others.

We found ancient environmental DNA from a diverse spectrum of ancient fauna, including woolly mammoths, horses, steppe bison, caribou, rodents, birds and many other animals.

We were also able to observe how ecosystems shifted with the rise of woody shrubs around 13,500 years ago, and how that correlated with a decline of DNA from woolly mammoths, horses and steppe bison. With this remarkably rich dataset, we observed four main findings.

An evolutionary tree showing the location and relationship of horses and their relatives with genomes reconstructed from bones and sediment. Credit: Tyler J.Murchie

When paired with other records, our genetic reconstructions suggest that the transition out of the last glacial period may have been more drawn out than dated bones alone would suggest.

Mammoths, for example, may have declined in local population abundance thousands of years earlier than other megafauna, which is potentially correlated with the first controversial evidence of humans in the area. Further, grassland grazing animals may have persisted for thousands of years in refugia (habitats that support the existence of an isolated population), despite the environmental shift.

Our data suggest that horses and woolly mammoths may have persisted in the Klondike until approximately 9,000 years ago and perhaps as recently as 5,700 years ago, outliving their supposed disappearance from local fossil records by 7,000 years. However, it is possible for ancient environmental DNA to survive erosion and re-deposition, which could mix the genetic signals of different time periods, necessitating a degree of caution in our interpretations.

Until recently, there was no evidence of mammoth survival into the mid-Holocene. But studies have now shown that mammoths survived until 5,500 and 4,000 years ago on Arctic islands.

Researchers at the Centre for GeoGenetics in Copenhagen found evidence for the late survival of horses and mammoths in Alaska until as recently as as 7,900 years ago. They also found evidence of mammoths surviving as recently as 3,900 years ago in Siberia, alongside woolly rhinoceros to at least 9,800 years ago.

Steppe bison, which were thought to have disappeared and been replaced by the American bison during the Pleistocene, have likewise been found to have survived even as recently as perhaps just 400 years ago. We were able to observe the presence of distinct genetic lineages of both woolly mammoths and steppe bison in the same sediment samples, which suggests that there were likely distinct populations of these animals living in the same area.

There is a growing body of evidence that many ice age megafauna probably survived well into recorded human history, roaming the north during the Bronze Age and while builders worked on the pyramids of Egypt.

Researchers in Denmark found evidence of woolly rhinoceroses surviving in Siberia at least 9,800 years ago.

The growing sophistication of environmental DNA methods to study ancient genetic microfossils highlights just how much information is buried in sediments.

Permafrost is ideal for preserving ancient DNA, but as this perennially frozen ground thaws and degrades with a warming Arctic, so too will the genetic material preserved within, and the evolutionary mysteries they once held.

Advances in paleogenetics continues to push the boundaries of what was once relegated to science fiction. Who knows what undiscovered evolutionary information remains frozen in ordinary sediments, hidden in microfossils of ancient DNA?

Written by Tyler J. Murchie, Postdoctoral fellow, Anthropology, McMaster University.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

Continued here:
Ancient DNA Suggests Woolly Mammoths Roamed the Earth More Recently Than Thought - SciTechDaily