Scientists have developed a method to isolate DNA from bones and teeth. It allows to directly identify the individuals who carried the objects.
Details of this new technique, which does not destroy samples, are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature. The method was applied for the first time to a set of objects from the French cave of Quinçay, near Poitiers, excavated between the seventies and nineties. In some it was possible to identify DNA from the animals from which the bones from which they had been made. But the vast majority of the DNA detected came from modern manipulations, carried out during or after the excavation.