When German archaeologists discovered bones in the tomb of Queen Eadgyth in Magdeburg Cathedral, they looked to Bristol to provide the crucial scientific evidence that the remains were indeed those of the English royal. Dr Alistair Pike in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology tells Hannah Johnson how tiny samples of tooth enamel proved the identity of a Saxon queen.Teeth provide remarkable evidence about the early years of an individual’s life. The region where a person grew up can be traced in the tooth enamel laid down in their first 14 years because strontium and oxygen isotope ratios in the teeth reflect the food a person ate and the water they drank.
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Scientists tracing the genetic origins of an Icelandic family believe the first American arrived in Europe around the 10th century, a full five hundred years before Columbus set off on his first voyage of discovery in 1492.
DNA 11, the company that brought 
Data from uniparentally inherited genetic systems were used to trace evolution of human populations. Reconstruction of the past primarily relies on variation in present-day populations, limiting historical inference to lineages that are found among living subjects.
An international team of scientists was opening the tomb of a famous 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in an effort to shed light on his sudden and mysterious death. Brahe, born in 1546, had been in Prague at the invitation of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II after leaving his scientific observatory on the island of Hven after a falling-out with the Danish king.
A team of international researchers led by ancient DNA experts from the University of Adelaide has resolved the longstanding issue of the origins of the people who introduced farming to Europe some 8000 years ago.
Researchers from Ireland, China, France, Germany and the United States, including Northern Arizona University's Paul Keim and David Wagner, have turned back the clock to examine the past 10,000 years of global plague disease events. Their findings regarding the plague pathogen, Yersinia pestis, will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal, Nature Genetics.
DNA tests confirmed Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was buried in a grave in Bucharest, forensic experts said on Wednesday, lifting doubt over the ruler's burial place.
Rock wildman Ozzy Osbourne has discovered how he managed to survive 40 years of drink and drug abuse - he's descended from Romans who lived through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The former Black Sabbath frontman has undergone complicated DNA testing for research scientists to map out his entire genetic make-up.
A text on a pyrographically decorated gourd dated to 1793 explains that it contains a handkerchief dipped with the blood of Louis XVI, king of France, after his execution. Biochemical analyses confirmed that the material contained within the gourd was blood.
Adelaide United players are among the first to be tested in a project to discover the ancestry of the city's residents. The genealogy project aims to find out where Adelaideans come from, going back over 2000 generations.
The Rockford Register Star reports that 24-year old Robert R Bishop, a second lieutenant in the 392nd Bombardment Group of the USAF, was last seen in April 29, 1944. During a mission in Hanover, Germany, Bishop's plane went down and for most of the past century his body remained undiscovered.
On a cold November night in 1950, the town marshal knocked on the side door of Mary K. Mitchell's family home in Cloverport, Ky. The telegram in his hand carried a devastating message: U.S. Army Cpl. Charles Patterson "Pat" Whitler, Mitchell's 22-year-old brother, was missing in action in the Korean War.
The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to "mitochondrial Eve" -- the maternal ancestor of all living humans -- confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago. The Rice University study was based on a side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models that each aim to determine when Eve lived using a very different set of assumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and spread across Earth.
Craig Venter and James Watson have done it, as has an African bushman named !Gubi and a handful of others. Now legendary Sioux chief Sitting Bull may be joining the small but growing number of people who have had their DNA sequenced.