Scientist use DNA from Hair to Produce Image of Neolithic Man

A team of scientists and researchers have decoded the DNA found in preserved human hair from a Stone Age man that lived in Western Greenland and have used this data to produce an image of his facial features.

The research team led by Morten Rasmussen of the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, analysed hair buried in the snow in Greenland.  The remarkable state of preservation enabled the scientists to map the genome and establish certain characteristics of this individual who lived 4,000 years ago.

The hair, from a male has enabled the researchers to produce an image of this human from ancient history – he is known as Saqqaq man, the name given to the Paleo-Eskimo culture and people whose remains and artefacts have been found in this region.  He has been nicknamed “Inuk” by the research team.

A Model of a Prehistoric Man

Papo prehistoric man.

The picture above, shows a caveman one of the models from the Papo “Les Dinosaures” range: Papo Prehistoric Animal Models.

Saqqaq Man

The scientists believe that Saqqaq man had dark brown eyes, dark brown hair, wide teeth and dry earwax, similar to Mongoloid features seen in many Asian communities today.  The hair was found amongst other small items of debris and it has been speculated that the discovery site was the place that our Stone Age man decided to get his hair cut.  The swatch of hair was so thick when it was first discovered it was labelled as hair from a bear and not investigated any further.

This discovery also sheds new light on the settlement of North America by showing there was a hitherto unsuspected migration of people across the continent, from Siberia to Greenland, some 5,500 years ago.

This Stone Age Greenlander and his genome has helped to establish that he was related to the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia.  Saqqaq man’s ancestors split apart from Chukchis some 5,500 years ago, according to genetic calculations, implying that the Saqqaq people’s ancestors must have travelled across the northern edges of North America until they reached Greenland.

No traces of the Saqqaq people have been found to date in North America, during this time, the very end of the Neolithic, there was no land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, but the Saqqaq people may have crossed into the Americas travelling over the winter sea ice.

The Saqqaq man’s genome is so complete that the Danish researchers have been able to reconstruct his probable appearance and susceptibility to disease from the genetic information in his genome. They conclude that he would have had brown eyes because of variations, at four positions along his DNA, that are associated with brown eye colour in East Asians.

He has the East Asian version of a gene known as EDAR, which endows people with hair that is thicker than that of most Europeans and Africans. Another gene suggests that he would have had dry earwax, as do Asians and Native Americans, not the wet earwax of other ethnic groups.  Ironically, since this person has been recreated using strands of hair, one element of the genome recovered hints that this man may have been prone to baldness in later life.

Evidence of Dinosaur Trackways from China – Thousands of Prints

China’s eastern Shandong province, has provided a number of spectacular dinosaur fossils since formal scientific exploration and study began in the area in the late 1960s. Most of the dinosaur discoveries have been centred around the city of Zhucheng.  Over the years a number of Cretaceous dinosaurs, many of them entirely new genera have been discovered.  However, official Chinese media has reported the discovery of not just body fossils (bones etc.), but a series of dinosaur trackways, (trace fossils), over 3,000 dinosaur prints in total.

Dinosaur Fossils

Body fossils such as dinosaur bones, can be transported a long way from the area in which the animal lived and died.  For example, a dinosaur that died inland could be washed into a river as the result of a flash flood and the carcase carried out to sea, where eventually it sank.  This could result in the preservation and fossilisation of a land living animal in marine deposits, as in the case of the Dorset (England), Scelidosaurus.

Trace fossils on the other hand, preserve evidence of the activity of animals, their tracks, trails, burrows all being preserved as part of the fossil record.  Most trace fossils are direct, in situ evidence of the behaviour and the environment of the animal at the time the trace was made.  The 3,000 prints provide evidence of the time and the place where the dinosaurs roamed.

Dinosaur Tracks

It is not the volume of prints that is most amazing, although this an exceptional number and represents a hugely significant find in itself, but the fact that at least six genera are represented by the tracks and that all the dinosaurs seemed to heading in the same direction.  Could all the plant-eaters have been running away from the theropods (meat-eaters that left their tracks to)?  Or could this be evidence of a dinosaur migration?

Migration events are common in extant species.  Team members at Everything Dinosaur have witnessed such astonishing events in the natural world as the immense Gnu migration in Kenya, as huge herds of these grazers migrate in search of fresh pasture.  Reindeer in the northern hemisphere migrate enormous distances, following the Reindeer are the predators (Wolves) ready to pick off the weak and vulnerable animals that get left behind.

The dinosaur footprints include those of large meat-eaters, a spokesperson for the Chinese excavation team speculated that they could be tyrannosaurs, as these types of large, carnivorous dinosaur are known from similarly aged rocks in the region.

Zhucheng has been nicknamed “Dinosaur City” as more than 30 excavations have taken place in and around the city to date.  In 2008, the largest single dinosaur fossil location in the world was discovered in the area, with something in excess of 7,000 individual dinosaur fossil bones at this one locality.  The pictures released show a Chinese researcher carefully walking over part of the fossiliferous site, in the foreground a number of bones are exposed, each marked with a white identity tag.

Working on the Trackway Site

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been working to map the trackway site, the first study of the trackways took over three months to complete.  The prints vary in size from ten to eighty centimetres in length, further work will be undertaken to ascertain the speed of travel and to assess why all these animals moved in the same direction.  It is expected that the site will yield a number of new exciting discoveries and provide palaeontologists with a rare opportunity to study interrelationships between different elements of the environment’s mega fauna.

“The Dinosaur City”

Zhucheng the “Dinosaur City” even has a dinosaur genus named after it, Zhuchengosaurus (Z. maximus), an enormous Late Cretaceous hadrosaurine (duck-billed dinosaur).  This colossal animal, is the largest known ornithopod in the fossil record.  Although, the only reconstructed skeleton is a composite mount (made up of parts from several individuals), the mounted dinosaur has a length of 16.6 metres and a height of 9.1 metres, although the posture that this duck-billed dinosaur has been displayed in (very upright and bipedal) has been questioned.

The small forelimbs, reminiscent of Mantellisaurus indicate that Zhuchengosaurus was very probably a facultative biped.

For models of dinosaurs including prehistoric animals from China: PNSO Age of Dinosaurs Figures.