The DNA of bacteria and viruses that infected humans thousands of years ago is still trapped in their skeletal remains.
A team of scientists has extracted ancient viral DNA from the teeth of victims of the outbreaks, buried beneath a colonial-era hospital and chapel in New Mexico.
The DNA reveals that the victims were infected with hepatitis B virus and human B19 parvovirus, rather than viruses with a European origin as previously thought.
'The viruses seem to have an African origin, and three of the humans we analysed were genetically African as well,' said Dr María C Ávila Arcos, assistant professor at the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Read the full article at the BBC and the paper published in eLife.
