Hunting the origins of the Black Death: dental DNA provides new clues. From the article:

Researchers believe they have discovered the origins of the Black Death, more than 600 years after it killed tens of millions in Europe, Asia and north Africa.

The mid-14th Century health catastrophe is one of the most significant disease episodes in human history…. Now analysis suggests it was in Kyrgyzstan, central Asia, in the 1330s.

A research team from the University of Stirling in Scotland and Germany’s Max Planck Institute and University of Tubingen analysed ancient DNA samples from the teeth of skeletons in cemeteries near Lake Issyk Kul, in Kyrgyzstan.

They chose the area after noting a significant spike in burials there in 1338 and 1339.

Dr Maria Spyrou, a researcher at the University of Tubingen, said the team sequenced DNA from seven skeletons.

They analysed the teeth because, according to Dr Spyrou, they contain many blood vessels and give researchers “high chances of detecting blood-borne pathogens that may have caused the deaths of the individuals”.

The research team were able to find the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in three of them….

The researchers’ work was published in the journal Nature, titled “The source of the Black Death in fourteenth-century central Eurasia”.

For other posts on the Black Death, see here.