2,330-year-old skeleton sheds light on human origin

A team of international researchers, including University of Cape Town (UCT) Emeritus Professor Andrew Smith and Professor Alan Morris, has unearthed remains of a skeleton from which they have extracted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that can provide clues to early modern human prehistory in Southern Africa. The 2,330-year-old male skeleton was discovered in 2010 by Professor Smith at St Helena Bay, South Africa. The researchers generated a complete ancient mitochondrial genome from the skeleton which, according to Professor Smith “is the first genomic evidence that pre-pastoral Southern African marine foragers carried the earliest diverged maternal modern human lineages”.