We measured the widths of 157 modern specimens of Nothofagus spp. (the genus of Southern beech) pollen from throughout the Southern Hemisphere and compared them with mean annual precipitation records to assess the relationship between pollen grain size and moisture availability.
"Like a new specimen of human beings".
Instead of anticipated sequence homogeneity, we obtained multiple unique sequences from both hair and blood of one modern specimen.
The Olduvai Bed IV specimen, though it was very much bigger than any modern specimen, was modern in its proportions, the Arambourg skull was on the edge of modern proportions, while the Ileret skull was outside the modern range.
These data explained the necessity to complement the database of modern specimens by a database of ancient specimens in order to increase the ratio of classification of the ancient specimens.
We can observe that, indeed, the incidence of type 1 transitions is very low in the 454 platform system (respectively 296.64 and 199.51 for the ancient and the modern specimen) compared to both the pure PCR system (1990.26 for the ancient specimen) and the mixed PCR-454 system (1006.02 and 1415.88 respectively for the ancient and the modern specimen).
Dr. Kappelman said in a telephone interview that the lesions near the base of the cranium were "dead ringers" for bone scars seen in modern specimens as a result of Leptomeningitis tuberculosa, the bacterium that causes a fatal disease of the brain not as common as the one that attacks the lungs.
Even the subfossil remains of living species are larger and more robust than the skeletal remains of modern specimens.
We also note that the incidence of type 2 transitions is much closer in the three groups of data (4540.82, 6386.07, and 4692.70 for the ancient specimens and 133.00 and 419.79 for the modern specimens respectively) than is that of type 1 transitions thus suggesting that all three techniques (454 platform, mixed PCR-454 PCRtform, provideovide an acceptable estimate of aDNA damage.
Although two specimens of S. kegaki fall within the age range of AD 1816 to present, all other samples represent modern specimens (Table 2).
