Bacteria have lived on our planet earth for about 3 billion years, most of the 4.5 billion years that the planet has been around. And while the industrious microbes are central to medicine, disease and most areas of the natural world, we understand little about the form they took in the ancient world.
Now, a new study from an interdisciplinary team has taken important steps to understanding stone age bacteria by sequencing genomes recovered from ancient dental calculus. The hardened tartar preserved bacterial fragments on the teeth of 12 Neanderthals and 34 humans that had lived anywhere from 102,000 to 150 years ago. Formed from plaque, this calculus fossilized during these humans’ lifetime, trapping genetic fragments inside.
“We have reached a major milestone in revealing the vast genetic and chemical diversity of our microbial past,” says one of the authors, Christina Warinner, an associate professor of anthropology at Harvard University, ...
