TWO cave bears that died in Austria more than 40,000 years ago have had their nuclear DNA sequenced. The technique used to recover sequences from a tooth and a bone has more than doubled the age at which this kind of DNA can be recovered – and could mean Neanderthals are next.
Recovering genetic material from ancient remains is fraught with difficulty because DNA degrades rapidly and is easily contaminated. Most successful studies have focused on the more abundant mitochondrial DNA, but this is much less useful. In exceptional cases nuclear DNA has been extracted from remains less than 20,000…
