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January 25, 2025Scientific ReportsOpen Access

Genomic analysis of three medieval parchments from German monasteries

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Authors

FHFelix HeinrichHSHenner SimianerJBJörg Bölling

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Overview

Genomic analysis uncovers extinct genetic variants in medieval cattle parchments, demonstrating the utility of ancient DNA for tracking document provenance.

Key Points

  • Assess the genetic origin, lineage relationships, and temporal divergence of cattle skins from 12th-century German monastic parchments to evaluate ancient DNA for manuscript provenance research.
  • Extracted ancient DNA from three 12th-century medieval parchments sourced from German monasteries (N=3).
  • Mapped and compared extracted genomic sequences against modern cattle populations from the 1000 Bull Genomes Project and historical animal reference genomes.
  • Identified the source animals as cattle carrying mitochondrial DNA haplogroup T3, displaying closer genetic proximity to historic livestock than modern breeds.
  • Detected 39 haplotypes and 132 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants that are rare (allele frequency < 0.1) or absent in modern cattle breeds.
  • Observed that genetic distances between samples correlated with document creation dates, supporting ancient genomics for document provenance and authenticity testing.

Cite This Study

Heinrich et al. (2025) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a1ffcd6d5e8712fdf65a48bhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-86887-y
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