Ancient DNA decays roughly four times faster in the Caribbean than in temperate North America and about 14 times faster than in subpolar Greenland and Alaska, and modelling the slowest-decaying of the 75 dated samples that still held enough DNA puts the practical limit on recoverable DNA there at roughly 5,000 years
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Canímar Abajo, a limestone rock shelter in Cuba, produced some of the best-preserved samples in a new survey of ancient DNA from across the Caribbean. Getting usable DNA out of one of them still meant grinding a piece of it away. Every ancient DNA result begins with a decision to destroy something, and in this region that decision has been unusually hard to make well, because the heat and humidity mean only a minority of samples hold enough human DNA for straightforward sequencing.
A survey publ
A survey publ
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