Ötzi the Iceman and the Sardinians

Well, the paper is finally out, New insights into the Tyrolean Iceman’s origin and phenotype as inferred by whole-genome sequencing. In case you don't know, Ötzi the Iceman died 5,300 years ago in the alpine region bordering Austria and Italy. His seems to have been killed. And due to various coincidences his body was also very well preserved. This means that enough tissue remained that researchers have been able to amplify his DNA. And now they've sequenced it enough to the point where they can make some inferences about his phenotypic characteristics, and, his phylogenetic relationships to modern populations. The guts of this paper will not be particularly surprising to close readers of this weblog. The guesses of some readers based on what the researchers hinted were correct: Ötzi seems to resemble mostly closely the people of Sardinia. This is rather interesting. One reason is prosaic. The HGDP sample used ...