“You can’t look at this specimen and not think it’s interesting; it’s quite dramatic. So I told my friend, ‘Look, whatever it is, if it’s got DNA, I can do the analysis,’” he added. After five years of arduous testing the scientists concluded that Ata was the skeleton of a human female “likely a fetus, that had suffered severe genetic mutations.”
Furthermore her remains were not as ancient as previously thought, only about 40 years old, and, “though most likely a fetus, had the bone composition of a 6-year-old, an indication that she had a rare, bone-aging disorder.”
The results also showed a number of mutations in Ata’s DNA that “separately or in combinations contribute to various bone deformities, facial malformations or skeletal dysplasia, more commonly known as dwarfism.”
The teams research was published Thursday in the journal Genome Research. It brings to a close the mystery surrounding the highly unusual find.
https://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2018/03/21/gr.223693.117
You can’t look at this specimen and not think it’s a fake; it’s quite out-of-a-box-of-Capn-Crunch.
Piltdown scandal re-run time.
Where was Thor Heyerdahl at the time?