"Gene scientists delving into the 5,300-year-old remains of Ötzi the Iceman, the mysterious mummified man found high in the Alps, say he most likely has no modern-day relatives. Italian and British experts looked into the mitochondrial DNA -- genetic material handed on down the maternal line -- teased from Ötzi's body at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is very stable, changing only gradually as it is handed down the generations, which means it is an excellent yardstick for genealogy. Ötzi's mtDNA belonged to a broad genetic category called K1, which is still common in Europe today, the investigators reported on Thursday. However, modern Europeans today belong to three sub-lineages of K1, whereas Ötzi's sub-lineage has most probably petered out. ‘Our analysis confirms that Ötzi belonged to a previously unidentified lineage of K1 that has not been seen to date in modern European populations,’ said Martin Richards, a professor of biology at the University of Leeds in northern England. ‘The frequency of genetic lineages tends to change over time, due to random variations in the number of children people have -- a process known as genetic drift' -- and as a result, some variants die out. Our research suggests that Ötzi's lineage may indeed have become extinct....’ In 1994, a probe into his mtDNA suggested that descendants of Ötzi may be alive today in Europe, but Richards said that this was based only on a small section of the telltale gene sequence. Richards did not rule the possibility that the samples of mtDNA from contemporary Europeans had failed to provide a full picture, which meant that Ötzi's lineage could still be around today. But only a fuller sampling among the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys where Ötzi was born could provide the answer. The latest investigation, led by Franco Rollo and Luca Ermini of the University of Camerino in Italy, was published in a British journal, Current Biology. ... "

For more information, see the Ötzi DNA page

"It began with a colossal mistake: Bill Bass, professor of forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee, got a corpse's time of death wrong by more than a century. "This was Colonel Shy," the 80-year-old recalls with a grin. "He was killed in the Battle of Nashville in 1864, during the Civil War." But when his coffin was unearthed in the 1970s, Prof Bass found a body so well preserved that there was still pink tissue on the femur. "He was embalmed with arsenic and buried in a cast-iron coffin that did not leak," he says. "Nobody had ever looked at arsenic as an embalming agent, nor at what happens to bodies in coffins. So my experience said this had to be somebody who died within the last six months." It was a serious example of a growing problem. When helping the state police investigate bodies, Prof Bass found it was hard to work out how long they had been dead and became convinced there was a need to study bodies as they decompose. So he took his ideas to the university, and was given land where he could study corpses - the Anthropology Research Facility, better known as "the Body Farm". "We wanted to know about the decay of the soft tissue," he says. "How long does it take? When does the right arm fall off? What happens to hair and fingernails?" The first specimens were unclaimed corpses from the police, but the farm's fame spread - it recently featured on the BBC's Stephen Fry in America - and now most bodies are left in wills...."

"A Georgetown woman might have been dead two years before her body was discovered in the trunk of her brother's car during a search late last week, police said Monday. Penny Brown's body was found Friday in the trunk of a 1998 Chevy Malibu that police was towed from St. Louis. The car is registered in the name of her brother, Timothy Allen Brown of Georgetown. Investigators were in search of Timothy Brown, 30, who is wanted for the knowing abuse or neglect of an adult and interstate flight to avoid prosecution. The FBI and the U.S. Marshal's Service have assisted in the investigation. Georgetown Police Chief Greg Reeves said Timothy Brown was cashing his disabled sister's SSI checks, which were between $600 and $700 per month. Police have stopped the checks "It's pretty sad that someone would do this to a family member," Reeves said during a news conference on Monday. "He was the caregiver and he was receiving a check, and he was cashing that check, and she wasn't getting any care." While she might have been dead for two years, Reeves said no missing person's report was made until Sept. 20...."

"The first hard evidence of psychoactive drug use in the ancient Andes has been discovered in mummies' hair, a new study says. The finding confirms that predecessors of the Inca known as the Tiwanaku used mind-altering substances, and hints that the civilization relied on far-reaching trade networks to obtain the drugs. Scientists recently analyzed 32 naturally mummified Tiwanaku bodies discovered in northern Chile's Azapa Valley, which lies in the Atacama Desert. The researchers discovered a compound called harmine in hairs from an adult male and a one-year-old baby, who both date to sometime between A.D. 800 and 1200. Harmine can help humans absorb hallucinogens and may be a powerful antidepressant. "These individuals probably ingested harmine in therapeutic or medicinal practices, some maybe related to pregnancy and childbirth," said study co-author Juan Pablo Ogalde, a chemical archaeologist at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile. "However, it is possible also that consumption of harmine was involved in religious rituals, said Ogalde, whose research appeared online October 14 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. X-rays showed that the adult male—who was buried with items of social prestige such as panpipes, a four-pointed hat, and a snuffing tray—had damage near the nose, perhaps from sniffing. As for the baby, Ogalde speculated that the mother had consumed the drug and passed it on to her offspring during pregnancy or breast-feeding...."

"Two Egyptian mummies who died more than 3,500 years ago have provided clear evidence for the earliest known cases of malaria, according to a study presented this week in Naples at an international conference on ancient DNA. Pathologist Andreas Nerlich and colleagues at the Academic Teaching Hospital München-Bogenhausen in Munich, Germany, studied 91 bone tissue samples from ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletons dating from 3500 to 500 B.C. Using special techniques from molecular biology, such as DNA amplification and gene sequencing, the researchers identified ancient DNA for the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in tissues from two mummies.... 'both positive cases came from two different tomb complexes at Thebes-West, dating from the New Kingdom until Late Period (1500 to 500 B.C.).... ' "

"For dinosaur hunters, finding fossils with soft tissue and even their last meals intact has been like hitting the jackpot. Now it seems that the much-hyped dinosaur "mummies" were merely thick-skinned, suggesting that more may be found than paleontologists had previously expected. Eric Lund of the Utah Museum of Natural History examined over a dozen newly discovered mummies in southern Utah. His analysis showed that these and other fossils all came from sand deposited in river beds that also contained remnants of wood and leaves - signs of a moist environment. This means it was too wet to dry out and mummify a dinosaur carcass, he told the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Cleveland last week. "It doesn't look like desiccation," he said. However they formed, the dinosaur fossils have attracted enormous attention ever since fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg discovered the first one in Wyoming a century ago. Leonardo, a duck-billed dinosaur, is the best-preserved dinosaur found to date, and is on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, in Texas...."

"There are two dead bodies in the Humanities building, and everyone is invited to see. Two mummies, part of SF State’s permanent archeological collection, will be on display in the Humanities building, along with other artifacts from the Sutro Egyptian Collection. The exhibit is from Nov. 3 through Dec. 12, and admission is free. Staffers estimate that the two mummies are around 3,500 years old. In past exhibits, students from schools such as Lakeshore Elementary would gather around the mummies in excitement. Christine Fogarty, the program administrator for museum studies, said the amazed children would smell the mummies through small holes in the glass casings.... The mummies’ actual cause of death is less spectacular than many of the kids’ eccentric speculations. According to CT scans, the mummy named Nes-Per-N-Nub died of natural causes. However, not much is known about the death of the other mummy, whose name is not written in hieroglyphics on her coffin. The department knows that it is a female, and gave her the nickname “the Yellow Mummy” after her yellow sarcophagus. What happened after the Yellow Mummy’s death is even more mysterious. Inside her linen wrappings lie the bones of multiple bodies, according to X-ray scans of the mummy.... "

"A large collection of artifacts from Egyptian tombs may strike some as macabre, but to Virginia Brilliant, they signify the Egyptians' love of life. Brilliant is assistant curator of European Art and organizing curator of "To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum" at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. The show's official opening is Saturday, although the galleries in the Ulla R. and Arthur F. Searing Wing are now open.... The collection includes the mummified remains of Demetrios, a wealthy citizen of Hawara at around 100 A.D.; two mummified dogs; the painted coffin of a mayor of Thebes from around 1075-945 B.C.; and an sculptures, pottery and statues. It will be on display through Jan. 11, with a wide range of supporting programming, including educational ones for children and adults, and an evening of Egyptian-styled food.... The Brooklyn Museum show, which was originally curated by Edward Bleiberg, is touring to 10 museums across the country. The Ringling is the collection's second stop...."

"...scientists are examining a new catastrophic scenario. Could it be that a severe rockslide in the Alps destroyed a prehistoric village? Alexander Binsteiner, a geologist and flint stone expert, has proposed the thesis. He believes that the accident affected lake dwellers living on the eastern tip of Mondsee Lake, near present-day Salzburg. Twenty to 50 wooden huts, coated with mud or cow dung, stood there on stilts along the lakefront. The women wore dresses made of flax, decorated with shells and snails, and the men wore bast fiber ponchos and sandals. It was considered cool to chew on birch tar, the prehistoric version of chewing gum. Similar lakeside settlements were common in the fourth millennium B.C. These collections of slightly elevated huts on moist ground were scattered around the Alps, from Lake Paladru in France, across the lakes of Switzerland and Austria to Slovenia and Lake Garda in present-day Italy.... Given the many clues, archeologists are anxious to come up with explanations soon. "We need a new, large excavation project at the site of the disaster," says Binsteiner. "Perhaps we will even find mummies there." " 

"Irish champion boxer Dan Donnelly’s mummified arm, the highlight of Jim Houlihan’s touring Fighting Irishmen eclectic art exhibit on Irish boxing the past four years, has come full circle. After stops at the Irish Arts Center, The South Street Seaport and Burns Library at Boston College on the Eastern shores of America, the most famous petrified limb in history is returning to its homeland for an exhibit at Ulster American Folk Park in Tyrone County, just outside of Omagh, Northern Ireland, scheduled to begin next spring through November 2009. "

"The body of an 80-year-old Mundgod monastery monk who died three weeks ago has shown no signs of decomposition. The KLE hospital in Belgaum had declared the Buddhist spiritual leader, Trippa Lobsung Nyama, dead but his followers insist he has attained samadhi (a deep, blissful, meditative state). All these days the body was kept inside an air-cooled hall where his followers offered prayers. Their belief only got strengthened when the body showed no signs of decomposition weeks after the death. The Mundgod monastery soon turned into a pilgrimage centre for Buddhists. A KLE medical team then studied the body. Senior Dr Vinay Mahishal, who was part of the team, told DNA that they sent their “confidential” report to the KLE medical trust chairman. “There’s no doubt that he is clinically dead. And I am surprised how putrefaction has not yet set in. The body was as serene and shining as on the day of death,” the doctor said. The hospital authorities explained that when a person stops taking water and food, water content in the body dries up, slowing down, or even temporarily arresting, putrefaction. The monk in question had stopped eating from some time before his death. It does not, however, mean that his body will remain that way for long. It could seem fresh for a while only. The only way to keep it intact for ages is to mummify it and his followers are doing that...."