A mitochondrial DNA study of cave bears suggest that cavemen hunted them to extinction.

Now an international team of scientists analyzing DNA in 17 newly identified fossils of cave bears has revealed the decline started 50,000 years ago, “much earlier than previously suggested, at a time when no major climate change was taking place, but which does coincide with the start of human expansion,” said researcher Aurora Grandal-D’Anglade at the University of Coruña in Spain.

The scientists compared 59 DNA sequences from cave bear mitochondria – the powerhouses within their cells – with 40 modern and fossil DNA samples from brown bears (Ursus arctos) to find out why the former went extinct while the latter did not.

Their findings suggest that cave bear genetic diversity – a clue to how many there were – began declining 50,000 years ago. Other fossil evidence reveals they ceased to be abundant in Central Europe roughly 35,000 years ago. (Diversity of genes can provide indirect evidence for the number of breeding individuals, because with more bears mating more genes are thrown into the mix, and vice versa.)

“This can be attributed to increasing human expansion and the resulting competition between humans and bears for land and shelter,” Grandal-D’Anglade explained.

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Scientists have decoded the genome of Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps.

“We now have access to the complete genetic profile of this world famous mummy. As a result the path is clear for an imminent solution to many of the puzzles surrounding the Iceman,” the Bolzano-based European Academy (Eurac) said in a statement.

Nicknamed Oetzi, the 5 000-year-old mummy is housed in the South Tyrol Archaeology Museum in Bolzano. He is believed to have died aged 46 after being shot with an arrow.

Scientists from Eurac, the University of Tbingen and experts in bioinformatics at Heidelberg, Germany, used the latest technologies to study Oetzi’s DNA – a process that began with the extraction of a bone sample from the pelvis of the ice mummy.

“It was a sensationally fast result,” Albert Zink, head of Eurac’s Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, told the German Press Agency. The process had been completed in two to three months when in the past “years” were required for such genome studies, Zink said.

The scientists now aim to process the “enormous quantity” of bio-data which has become available to them.

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Nicolaus Copernicus has been reburied after the his remains were exhumed to conclusively identify them, 467 years after his death.

A painstaking search ensued for several years until the precious genetic material required was finally found. Göran Henriksson, astronomer at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, searching in a book “Magnum Romanum Calendarium” by Johannes Stoeffler, dated 1518, found several hairs inside the book. This is a manual that Copernicus had used during his life in Poland and was taken by the Swedes during the Polish-Swedish wars in the first quarter of the seventeenth century.

The DNA analysis done in laboratories in Sweden and Poland confirmed that two of the hairs matched the genome sequences of the tooth material from the skull found in Frombork.

Once identified, it was decided that the remains of the astronomer should be buried again in the Cathedral after stops at several churches and Gothic castles in the region of Warmia, which the astronomer traveled many times as a canon and ecclesiastical administrator. The remains arrived at Frombork in the middle of last week. Now the great astronomer, mathematician and physician rests under the main altar in a black granite tomb with a three meters high headstone.

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The Mayor of Bideford, a small port town in north Devon, England, is attempting to prove that people from his town settled in America 30 years before the Pilgrim’s set sail.

Andy Powell hopes to find funds for DNA tests that might help demonstrate Bideford’s “pivotal” role in the history of modern America. If he can find the proof, the town might find itself at the centre of a tourism boom.

At the centre of the saga is the story of the “lost colony”, a tale better known in the US than in Britain. In 1587 Sir Walter Raleigh organised a colonial expedition of settlers including a governor, John White. Powell said it was thought that the fleet set sail from Bideford on 8 May and reached Roanoke Island, just off the coast of what is now North Carolina, in July.

Friendly relations were established with the Croatoan Native Americans, and the fleet sailed back to England. The following year a new fleet was preparing to return to Roanoke when it was diverted to fight the Spanish armada. When White finally returned in 1590 the settlement was deserted, with no sign of a struggle or battle.

Powell said one clue as to what might have happened to the settlers was the word “Croatoan” carved into a post. He said this suggested the settlers had joined the native Americans. Over the next few years there were stories of blue-eyed Native Americans, fields organised in the British style and a sighting of white men beating copper with the Indians.

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Here is something I did not know about Charles Darwin: his family was inbred and it affected his children.

He is the father of evolution, whose discoveries revolutionised our understanding of genetics.

But even Charles Darwin was not exempt from the vagaries of DNA.

Three of Darwin’s 10 children died in childhood, while another three never had any children of their own, despite being married for years.

A study of the scientist’s family tree suggests inbreeding was to blame, with frequent cousin to cousin marriages lowering immunity to disease and raising the odds of infertility.

Darwin’s mother, Susannah, was the daughter of third cousins, one of which was Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the pottery dynasty of the same name.

Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood, was his first cousin, while the Wedgwood family tree contained several other marriages between cousins.

The couple had ten children – four girls and six boys – between 1839 and 1858. But only seven survived to adulthood.

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