Piecing together the Dead Sea Scrolls with DNA evidence

Tuesday, June 2, 2020 - 10:21 in Paleontology & Archaeology

The collection of more than 25,000 fragments of ancient manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls include, among other ancient texts, the oldest copies of books of the Hebrew Bible. But finding a way to piece them all together in order to understand their meaning has remained an incredibly difficult puzzle, especially given that most pieces weren't excavated in an orderly fashion. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell on June 2 have used an intriguing clue to help in this effort: DNA "fingerprints" lifted from the animal skins on which the texts were written.

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