Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings (“I’m Puzzled by DNA Claims on ‘Faces of America’”) writes about the fourth and last episode of “Faces of America,” a PBS documentary series investigating the ancestry of several famous people in America. This fourth episode included several different types of genetic genealogy to examine the ancestral origins and relatedness [...]
I recently received an interesting question from a reader (see this comment) about 23andMe’s Relative Finder, and thought it would be worth sharing the question and my answer with all my readers.
The Question:
I’m a man who recently took a 23andMe test, and I have a question about Relative Finder. Another man who I match [...]
ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a “Success Stories” page where it posts short summaries of just a few the many successes that genetic genealogy has helped people achieve. Today I noticed that there are several new summaries regarding “Autosomal DNA Successes,” both of which were the result of 23andMe’s new Relative [...]
[PLEASE NOTE: The Onion is a satirical site meant for ENTERTAINMENT and social commentary purposes only. The following study is NOT real!]
The Onion, an infamous mock news site has a (surprisingly intelligent) article today entitled “7 Million People Direct Descendants Of Single Smooth-Talking Ancestor” about a “study” that has found that millions of people around [...]
An article in the United Arab Emirate newspaper The National (wikipedia) does a terrific job of highlighting recent research from Family Tree DNA. The story - “DNA could illuminate Islam’s lineage” – discusses research that has attempted to elucidate the Y-DNA signature of Mohammed. Although Mohammed did not have a son, he had [...]
Image by Aaron Logan
Roughly 6 million years ago, the Hominini subtribe of the Hominidae family tree (the so-called “great apes”) diverged into two known branches, with one branch (genus Pan ) resulting in modern-day Chimpanzees and Bonobos, and the other branch (genus Homo) resulting in modern-day humans.
Since there has only been 6 million years of [...]
An international team of researchers have concluded that humans entered the Americas from Asia along at least two different paths. By studying two rare mtDNA haplogroups found in Native Americans – D4h3 and X2a – the researchers conclude that D4h3 spread into the Americans along the Pacific coast while X2a entered through the [...]
Image via Wikipedia
I received the following press release today from SMGF:
SALT LAKE CITY (Dec. 30, 2008)—Genetic research by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) and scientists from ten organizations in Europe and the U.S. shows human groups with the deepest roots in southeastern Europe were not pushed out by an incoming wave of farmer-colonists as [...]
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project from National Geographic and IBM.
The talk was a Syracuse Symposium event, and the first big event ever to be held in Syracuse University’s new $110 million Life Sciences Center. I thought it was fitting that [...]
Image via Wikipedia
Ötzi the Iceman is the popular name for a 5,000 year-old mummy discovered frozen in the ice of the Alps in 1991. Studies of the Iceman has revealed an immense amount of information about him, including details of his life, his death, and his culture.
Although Ötzi’s mtDNA has previously been studied, researchers [...]
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